Negotiations for Israel Coalition Cabinet Meet New Snag

The negotiations for a new coalition Cabinet took a turn for the worse last night as the three small parties in the present Cabinet stuck to their demands and Acting Premier Moshe Sharett insisted on an early decision.

The Progressive Party Council last night reiterated its opposition to entering any Cabinet on a program which called for an election law change limiting Knesset representation to a party which received at least 4.2 percent of the total vote cast in a national election. The Progressives insist on the scrapping of the election law change, to which the Mapai and the General Zionists agreed when they recently concluded their coalition pact.

The Progressives acted after Dr. Pinchas Rosen reported that he had failed to obtain agreement from the General Zionists to scrap the election law amendment and give up the post of Deputy Minister of Education, which was granted in the pact with the Mapai. The religious parties now have that post and refuse to surrender it.

Dr. L J. Unterman, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, addressing a mass meeting here last night, demanded that the religious parties not join the coalition government unless Parliament passes a law restricting the raising and sale of pork. Meanwhile, the religious parties have expanded their campaign against pork sales by appealing to the municipalities to ban them. In communities such as Nathanya, Tiberias and Safed the municipality has adopted regulations prohibiting the sale of meat not slaughtered in local abattoirs, thus effectively banning pork.

The coalition pact drafted and approved by various lower level bodies of the Mapai and General Zionist Parties has already been ratified by the General Zionist Central Committee. The Mapai Central Committee, however, last night postponed a meeting at which the pact was to be ratified, without fixing a new meeting time.