Sharon offers defence job to Barak

9:00 AM By LAURIE COPANS Herald correspondent

Israeli Prime Minister–elect Ariel Sharon and his predecessor, Ehud Barak, have talked about setting up a joint government, even though the two disagree sharply on how to make peace with the Palestinians.

Mr Sharon yesterday offered Mr Barak the position of defence minister, according to a Mr Sharon aide. Before the meeting, Mr Barak backed up a key Mr Sharon claim, that concessions he offered the Palestinians do not obligate Mr Sharon.

Mr Sharon said in an interview published today that he would seek an open–ended non–belligerency pact with the Palestinians, not a peace agreement, and that he would not follow Mr Barak's path. Mr Sharon also insisted that he will not launch peace talks until all violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has ceased.

Overnight, Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen battled for about three hours near the Jewish settlement of Psagot, adjacent to the Palestinian town of El Bireh. Several buildings in a residential neighborhood of El Bireh were damaged by Israeli fire, including the offices of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German aid group, and the Red Crescent, a Palestinian first aid organisation. No one was injured.

Mr Barak's offers included setting up a Palestinian state in the almost all of the West Bank and Gaza, sharing Jerusalem and dismantling many Jewish settlements.

The Palestinians did not accept Mr Barak's proposals, but negotiator Ahmed Qureia said talks must restart from the point where they ended just before Israel's Tuesday election. "We can't go backwards," said Qureia.

But Mr Sharon said all along that Mr Barak's ideas would not obligate him, and Mr Barak agreed. "The principle 'nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon' was accepted by all sides," Mr Barak said in a letter to U.S. President George Bush, according to his office.

Denouncing Mr Barak's compromise offers to the Palestinians and his willingness to negotiate during a violent Palestinian uprising, Mr Sharon trounced Mr Barak by 62.3 to 37.7 per cent, according to final election results released yesterday.

Mr Sharon met Mr Barak today, after negotiating teams from their parties, Likud and Labour, discussed dividing up ministries in a Sharon Cabinet. Separated by a low table in Mr Barak's office, the two stood up to shake hands at the request of photographers.

Mr Barak's Labour party was the first Mr Sharon invited for coalition talks, which began yesterday evening. Likud officials told Labour representatives that they would be offered such top portfolios as the defence or foreign ministries, Israeli media reported.

But the Labour negotiators said they wanted details on Mr Sharon's plans for peace talks with the Palestinians before they agreed to discuss the distribution of ministries. The two teams will meet again Sunday.

Mr Barak and elder statesman Shimon Peres told a Labour party meeting yesterday that they were open to the idea of the party joining a government with Mr Sharon.

"The nation is going through a great crisis," Peres told the meeting in reference to more than four months of Israeli–Palestinian clashes that have killed 385 people, most of them Palestinans.

"We have a real interest in uniting and stabilising the country," Peres said.

But there was fierce opposition. Justice Minister Yossi Beilin spoke against joining Mr Sharon's team and serving as a "fig leaf for doing nothing on the peace process."

Mr Barak said yesterday that he wanted to lead the Labour team in the coalition talks, although he announced earlier that he would resign from the party leadership and parliament once the new government was formed.

If Mr Sharon is unable to come to quick agreement with Labour, he is expected to turn to right–wing and Orthodox Jewish parties and form a coalition with a narrow majority.

Even before taking office, Mr Sharon made contact with Palestinian leaders. He sent a message to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on yesterday, and spoke by telephone to Mr Arafat's deputy, Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr Sharon said he informed Mr Arafat that "Israel has an interest in holding negotiations and advancing the peace process but this depends on a total cessation of violent acts."

Mr Sharon was speaking after a car bombing in Jerusalem injured an Israeli woman. A Palestinian group calling itself the Popular Palestinian Resistance Front took responsibility for the attack in a fax sent to The Associated Press in Jerusalem.

Islamic militants have threatened to carry out bomb attacks in response to Mr Sharon's election. Palestinians regard Mr Sharon as a sworn enemy because of his hard–line policies and his history of military and diplomatic actions against them.

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