Shamir, Given Turn to Form Coalition, Says He Would Not Accept Baker Plan

Acting Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir appears to have put the peace process he launched a year ago on hold.

He made clear he is not prepared to hold talks with Palestinians at this time and that any new Likud-led government he succeeds in forming would reject U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s peace formula.

Shamir on Friday received a 21-day mandate from President Chaim Herzog to try to form a governing coalition. It was a task Labor Party leader Shimon Peres acknowledged failing when he relinquished his mandate to Herzog last Thursday, after 36 days of fruitless efforts.

Shamir expressed his hard-line views on the peace process in a prerecorded Independence Day radio interview to be broadcast Monday. Excerpts from the interview were reported Sunday.

The prime minister said his new government would not respond positively to Baker’s suggestion for an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, to be held in Cairo at the invitation of Egypt.

The purpose of such a meeting would be to set the ground rules for the Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the highly touted core of the peace plan Shamir announced with fanfare last spring.

Shamir maintains his plan did not provide for any dialogue and that negotiations were to take place after elections, not beforehand. He acknowledged there probably would need to be “some sort of meeting, sometime” with Palestinians, but it need not be in Cairo and it need not be now.

Shamir’s earlier rejection of Baker’s plan led to the toppling of his Likud-Labor unity coalition government on March 15.

REJECTS RABIN PLAN FOR UNITY COALITION

But now that Labor has missed its chance to replace the fallen regime, Shamir is writing off a new unity government.

He slammed the door over the weekend on a proposal by the Labor Party’s No. 2 official, Yitzhak Rabin, to establish a new Labor-Likud alliance of six months’ duration for the sole purpose of enacting electoral reforms, to be followed by new elections.

The former defense minister, who hopes to replace Peres as Labor Party leader, believes the laws should be amended to allow for the direct election of the prime minister, freeing him from complicated, demeaning and self-defeating coalition politics.

Shamir and his Likud bloc say they arc not interested in a new alliance with Labor. Their intention is to form a narrow-based government with the support of a majority of the Knesset’s 120 members.

That could be accomplished if the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party breaks its once firm coalition agreement with Labor, giving Likud a total of 66 votes it can count upon.

There were strong signs last week that Agudah would split with Labor once Peres turned in his mandate, but its adherence to Likud remained problematic.

Without Agudah, Likud claims to have 61 Knesset votes, the minimum it needs to set up a government.

The deciding vote belongs to Likud renegade Avraham Sharir, who sold himself to Labor for a “safe seat,” only to desert back to Likud once Labor’s failure to form a government became apparent.

Likud is also working hard on a potential Labor defector, Efraim Gur, a 17-year immigrant from Soviet Georgia who lives in Ashdod, an immigrant town with strong right-wing leanings.

Gur has indicated he would feel more at home with Likud than Labor, especially since Likud is said to have offered him a ministerial or deputy ministerial office.

The law gives Shamir 21 days to form a government and a 21-day extension if he needs it. The arithmetic at the moment seems to favor his chances.

His majority would depend on getting all five votes of the National Religious Party. But one of its Knesset members, Yigal Bibi, declared Sunday that the party’s consistent position has been to back a broad unity government or to call new elections.