The Inner Cabinet will reconvene Wednesday to continue debate over Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’ proposals for an international conference for Middle East peace which Premier Yitzhak Shamir has vowed to defeat.
The government’s top policymaking body, comprising five Labor and five Likud Ministers, met for 4 1/2 hours Monday but reached no conclusions. One participant said they held a “polite but unproductive argument.” Another said the closed-door session might as well have been public because “there was nothing new.”
Peres is scheduled to fly to Washington Wednesday night for a brief visit, including a meeting with Secretary of State George Shultz. A letter from Schultz urging Israel to accept an international conference scenario was read by Peres at Monday’s meeting. He and Shamir had received it the night before.
According to some sources, Shultz wrote that while he had initially been skeptical about the conference, he now believes it is the right plan to follow. The Inner Cabinet heard Peres restate his belief that a conference “opening” would be followed immediately by direct negotiations with Jordan and other parties to the Middle East conflict.
Likud Ministers were strongly critical of that approach. Aides to Peres said a vote could be expected at Wednesday’s meeting. Most observers predict another stalemate. If the Inner Cabinet splits along party lines, Peres’ proposals will have been defeated. Peres has pledged in that event to challenge Shamir to dissolve the Knesset and call early elections.
Shamir urged his Likud colleagues Tuesday to reject “utterly and without reservation” Peres’ plan. He called it a “criminal and stupid attempt” that must be “removed from our agenda, every last trace and vestige of it.”
Peres’ office said later it was “dumbfounded” by Shamir’s “brutal language.” Political observers said Shamir’s truculence was a sign he believes he can defeat Peres’ plan and forestall early elections.
The Premier spoke Tuesday of “a pleasant conversation” he had the night before with former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual mentor of the religious Shas Party. Shas sources said Yosef is opposed to an international conference. Without the votes of its four-man Knesset faction, Labor probably will not be able to pass a motion to dissolve Parliament.
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