The pace of coalition talks, which the Labor Party’s new leader. Yitzhak Rabin had promised would be a speedy one, slowed down today when the Labor Alignment’s negotiating committee postponed for several days a meeting that had been scheduled for today. The reason given for the delay was today’s Cabinet meeting that was expected to stretch into the late evening as the government prepared for the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.
The Labor Party’s leadership bureau and the Alignment Knesset faction are due to meet here tomorrow after which coalition talks are expected to begin. The care-taker Cabinet will meet in special session Tuesday to consider Israel’s policy on disengagement with Syria on the eve of Kissinger’s arrival. Sources close to Rabin expressed concern today that the Kissinger mission might upset the planned schedule of coalition talks.
Rabin received his mandate to form a new government from President Ephraim Katzir last Friday and the feeling was that once coalition talks get started they will move quickly. Unofficial approaches to the two potential coalition partners–National Religious Party and the Independent Liberal Party–began even before Rabin saw the President and Labor Alignment sources expressed optimism that a new coalition could be formed on the basis of the old one without recourse to elections.
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