Barak backs out of Sharon's offer to join cabinet

By PHIL REEVES

JERUSALEM - The defeated Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak turned down an offer last night from his successor, prime minister-elect Ariel Sharon, to take up the defence portfolio in a new government of national unity and will instead resign from parliament.

On the eve of Mr Sharon's landslide victory on 6 February, Mr Barak had said he would resign as Labour Party chairman and take a "time out" from politics, though he later wrote to Mr Sharon accepting the job, sparking opposition within his own party.

Mr Barak's exit appeared to increase the chances that Mr Sharon would set up a hard-line government without Mr Barak's moderate Labour party, offering no concessions to the Palestinians for peace.

Mr Barak complained in a letter that Mr Sharon had started treating Labour like a soldier who must follow orders, "in a way that seriously harms the trust between us and does not allow me to accept the position" of defence minister.

Mr Barak's refusal came as Israel faced renewed allegations that it is practising an illegal but state-endorsed policy of assassinating Palestinians suspected of planning or carrying out armed attacks.

In a detailed and scathing report this morning, Amnesty International accuses the Israeli government of fuelling a cycle of violence by allowing extra-judicial executions by its security services, some of which involved targets who could have been arrested.

"Since 9 November 2000, the Israeli Defence Force has pursued a policy of deliberately targeting those alleged to have carried out, or to have planned to carry out, violent attacks against Israelis," it says. "Since the beginning of the intifada, scores of other Palestinians have been killed unlawfully: the result of excessive, disproportionate or negligent use of force."

Amnesty's findings come a day after several thousand people joined the funeral procession of an Islamic militant who was shot in the West Bank city of Nablus, in what Palestinians say was the latest of about 20 assassinations by Israeli forces.

Mahmoud Madani, 25, was killed by four bullets on Monday shortly after leaving a mosque in a refugee camp. The governor of Nablus has blamed the attack on an Israeli undercover squad, which allegedly shot him from a passing car. He was an activist in the Islamic militant group Hamas. Israeli security forces are known to believe he was linked with two recent car bombs inside Israel, in which two people were killed and scores injured.

Amnesty examined seven earlier cases, and concluded that the "acceptance by Israel of unlawful killings and the failure to investigate each killing at the hands of the security services is leading to a culture of impunity among Israeli soldiers and is fuelling a cycle of violence and revenge". It also accused Israel of killing at least six bystanders in a "reckless and disproportionate use of force". It is a tenet of international law that civilians cannot be targeted in a conflict.

Amnesty found that, since the start of the intifada, more than 350 Palestinians, including nearly 100 children, have been killed by Israeli security forces. Most of these killings were unlawful, it said. In one case Amnesty investigated, it concluded that a taxi driver, an alleged Hamas activist, was killed in the Gaza Strip by five Israeli soldiers who were standing seven feet away when they shot him. Instead of arresting him, Amnesty found, the troops fired into a full minibus, killing their target and fatally wounding another person.

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