ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 7, 1990                   TAG: 9003071349
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: JERUSALEM                                 LENGTH: Medium

RIFT THREATENS ISRAELI GOVERNMENT

Labor Party leaders took only a half-hour Tuesday to urge their Likud bloc rivals to accept U.S.-backed conditions for peace talks with Palestinians immediately or face the prospect of Israel's unity government disintegrating.

Vice Premier Shimon Peres, Labor leader, and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who often disagree about the peace negotiations, stood together in rejecting new conditions that Likud leaders had approved at 1 a.m. Tuesday, after a five-hour meeting.

At the same time, Foreign Minister Moshe Arens of the Likud said the government would fall apart if Labor continued to present ultimatums. "This is no way to advance the peace process," he said.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, leader of the Likud, agreed Tuesday to Labor's request that the six Likud and six Labor ministers of the powerful inner Cabinet take up the controversy today.

Labor wants the ministers to act on crucial questions, the answers to which could set Israeli-Palestinian talks in motion, delay the talks further, or kill the process and lead Labor to attempt to form a new governing coalition.

Peres said government failure to accept U.S.-backed conditions would "mean the end of the process, and the end of the process will call for conclusions concerning the future of the government."

Labor has scheduled a meeting Thursday to formalize its next move, if the inner Cabinet fails at least to come near agreement.

The Likud ministers dramatically changed the internal debate early Tuesday when they rejected any participation of East Jerusalem Palestinians in proposed elections in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hard-line Likud leaders who oppose East Jerusalem participation in any part of the process, and some who reject talking to Palestinians altogether, prevailed. The decision rejected U.S. efforts to include at least one East Jerusalem Palestinian in the negotiating process. 


 by CNB