Israeli PM wants national emergency government

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said he hoped to form a "national emergency government" swiftly with the participation of right-winger Ariel Sharon, a leading opponent of peace deals with the Palestinians.

"The right thing to do is a national emergency government, even if it takes three or four days to set it up," Barak said after a Palestinian mob killed two Israeli soldiers and Israel launched retaliatory helicopter gunship raids.

"Ariel Sharon is a deserving, serious man and definitely a very important partner for a national emergency government and obviously in such a government he could be influential. He is not a man whose presence could be ignored in the governments in which he served," Barak told a news conference.

The Likud party leader, Sharon has yet to say he would join a coalition led by Barak, head of the left-centre One Israel faction.

His participation would likely harden Israeli positions in any future peacemaking with the Palestinians.

Bringing Sharon into the government would also anger the Arab world and some of Israel's allies who have assailed his highly publicised September 28 visit to a Jerusalem shrine holy to Jews and Muslims.

Palestinians said his visit had "defiled" the site.

Many Arabs hate Sharon because he led the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

An Israeli inquiry found him indirectly responsible for a massacre of Palestinian refugees by Israel's Christian militia allies at the Sabra and Shatila camps outside Beirut.

Sharon last served in an Israeli government as foreign minister under Benjamin Netanyahu, who was defeated by Barak in the prime ministerial election in 1999.

- REUTERS

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