Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon on Sunday resumes the difficult task of forming a new coalition government, amid continued clashes with Palestinians and pressure from a unifying Arab world, said reports.
Right-wing hard-liner Sharon was due to meet various political factions in the bid to forge a coalition, possibly including the Labor party of his beaten rival Ehud Barak, said Haaretz newspaper.
Despite announcing his resignation from the parliament following his defeat at the polls earlier this month, Barak has not ruled out Sharon's offer to serve as defense minister in his government.
Former premier and Labor party dove Shimon Peres has also suggested he might be open to the defense or foreign affairs portfolios.
Sharon was also due to meet with the heads of Israel's two security agencies, said the paper.
In an acknowledgement of the worries Sharon's victory causes for many in the Middle East, Israeli chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz, said the military will work to prevent any escalated tension.
Israel's response to the Palestinian uprising, in which nearly 400 people have died since September, has prompted widespread international criticism, including comments from the United Nations, which is sending three experts to the region to investigate alleged human rights violations, AFP said.
Military radio said Saturday that Israel would not cooperate with the commission, which it said had already judged that Israel has committed "war crimes," but commission member, John Dugard, said the panel would carry on with its work anyway.
The politicking goes on against a backdrop of continued violence in the Palestinian territories.
Five Palestinians were reportedly wounded by Israeli gunfire during clashes Saturday and a house was damaged by shelling from an army tank, the agency said.
The Israeli army also said the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip had been attacked by Palestinian mortar fire, but that there were no casualties.
Arab leaders, who began a two-day meeting in Amman Saturday, called on Prime Minister-elect Sharon not to take his country off the path of peace.
Jordanian foreign minister, Abdel Ilah al-Khatib, told the opening session that "the new Israeli government must tread the path of peace and stay away from anything that contradicts this path, particularly the language of aggression and the threat to use force."
For his part, Arab League Secretary General Esmat Abdel Meguid noted that the meeting came at a crossroads in world politics with the arrival of the new Bush administration in Washington, AFP quoted him as saying.
"The new American administration has its own policies concerning the peace process and its arrival coincides with the election victory of the extremist Sharon," he said.
"As a result we must step up inter-Arab consultations and reinforce our coordination to adopt a unified position towards all the issues at stake, namely the Intifada," he said.
The meeting will pave the way for a full Arab summit, to be held next month in Jordan, five months after Arab leaders met in Cairo.
Before the meeting started, Jordan's King Abdullah II urged Sharon to resume peace talks with the Palestinians from where they had left off before the election, said the official news agency PETRA.
In a letter congratulating Sharon, the king said he hoped peace talks will resume "from the point which the negotiations arrived at, so that we do not reverse the process and our region does not return to a state of anarchy and instability."
Sharon said Friday he planned to meet Palestinian President Yasser Arafat but signaled he would take a tough line in any peace talks and refrain from talks as long as there is violence on the streets – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
