Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres will convene a meeting of Labor cabinet members on Wednesday to discuss the party's future in the coalition government, following the cabinet's decision to declare the Palestinian Authority a "terror-supporting entity" following a spate of suicide bombings, reported the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz.
"There are many members of my party who think the time has come to leave the government," Peres told reporters Tuesday in Bucharest, where he was attending a conference. "Upon my return home we shall meet and we shall decide."
He was speaking in the Romanian capital in the sidelines of a meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
"Upon my return home we shall meet and decide," he said. Pressed on the issue, he was quoted by AFP as saying: "it is a democratic party," nothing that when it joined the coalition its members voted by 70 to 30 percent to join.
Public radio said Peres had called all the ministers from his Labor Party for a special meeting Wednesday. It did not specify if the Labor Party would consider leaving Sharon's coalition, in which it has eight ministerial posts, said AFP.
Citing sources close to Peres, Haaretz said that the foreign minister supports leaving the government. Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg also called on the party to resign. But majority of Labor ministers - among them Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Matan Vilnai, Ephraim Sneh and Ra'anan Cohen - favor staying in the government, according to the paper.
After a marathon six-hour session Monday, the cabinet voted to declare the Palestinian Authority "an entity that supports terror."
A senior Israeli official, who asked not to be named, told the agency earlier that Labor party ministers, in an apparent rift, had walked out of the Israeli cabinet meeting before a vote on tough measures against the Palestinians was passed by 18 for to one against.
The meeting came hours after Israeli warplanes attacked Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s heliport in Gaza.
At least two Palestinians were killed and more than 150 wounded in airraids on Gaza and the West bank on Monday and Tuesday.
Sharon had made a hard-hitting speech after the strikes, accusing Arafat of backing terrorism and being responsible for "everything that has happened here," including horrific suicide bombings which killed at least 25 Israelis at the weekend -- -- Albawaba.com
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