Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has formed a cabinet team to negotiate with hard-liner Ariel Sharon's right-wing Likud on forming an emergency government following the Arab summit, his office said Monday.
The negotiating team includes Interior Minister Haim Ramon, Communications Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and Social Affairs Minister Raanan Cohen.
They were scheduled to meet Monday with representatives of the opposition Likud, the ultra-orthodox Shas party and the left-wing Meretz.
Barak told the group to conclude an accord with Likud soon, if possible by the end of the week, according to his office.
The premier's Labor-led coalition government has not had a majority in parliament for the past three months and could fall if the right votes against him.
"I will strive to expand the government in the direction of a national emergency government," he told a cabinet meeting on Sunday.
"I have no doubt that even a national emergency government will strive towards an Israeli-Palestinian peace, even if there are differences of emphasis and nuance," he added, according to a statement on the meeting released by his media advisor.
The idea of a national unity government has met with stiff resistance from both within his own government and the right.
Ten of the 19 Likud MPs have demanded, as a precondition for participation in an enlarged government, that Barak publicly renounce the unprecedented concessions to the Palestinians he laid out in last July's failed Camp David talks.
According to the Israeli media, Barak would have accepted an Israeli withdrawal of almost 90 percent of the West Bank, and the transfer to Palestinian control of some areas of Arab east Jerusalem, occupied since 1967.
The right denounced those concessions as unacceptable.
Dovish Justice Minister Yossi Beilin reiterated Monday his opposition to forming a government with the right, believing it would be tantamount to burying the peace process.
He threatened to quit if Likud "got a right to veto" in an enlarged cabinet.
On Sunday, Barak condemned the "language of threats" which he said emerged from the Arab summit in Cairo and suspended the Middle East peace process brokered by the United States – JERUSALEM (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
