Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir met Tuesday with his arch rival and critic Ariel Sharon, to try to inject an element of decorum in the way Likud conducts its internal disputes.
But the two failed to agree even on an agenda for the party’s Feb. 7 Central Committee meeting.
Sharon is making the rounds of Central Committee members, trying to score against Shamir by attacking the premier’s closest ally in the party, Foreign Minister Moshe Arens.
Sharon, who is minister of industry and trade, hopes the Likud rank and file will reject Shamir’s peace initiative. He wants the Central Committee’s more than 2,000 members to vote on each issue, including Shamir’s plan for Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and his conduct of diplomacy with the United States and Egypt.
Shamir demands that the Central Committee listen to his policy speech and vote to endorse it. Failing that, he says he will resign.
Sharon’s latest accusation is that Arens, a former defense minister, dodged military service in 1948 and 1951.
Arens responded that Sharon must be ignorant of his record because he is a latecomer to Likud. The outspoken general did not enter politics until after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
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