Olmert to press on with pullout

After its victory in Israeli elections, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party said yesterday it would quickly form a broad ruling coalition that will carry out its plan to pull out of much of the West Bank and draw Israel's borders by 2010.

Party officials said that despite a weaker-than-expected performance in Tuesday's election, Kadima has widespread support in parliament.

Kadima won only 28 seats, less than the 35 it had hoped for, but still making it the largest party in the 120-member parliament. Like every other ruling party in Israeli history, it will have to form a coalition government with other parties.

US President George W. Bush yesterday telephoned Olmert to congratulate the interim leader and invited him to visit Washington immediately after he forms a cabinet.

Declaring victory early yesterday, Olmert renewed his call for peace talks with the Palestinians and said he is prepared to make compromises, such as uprooting some Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

"In the coming period, we will move to set the final borders of the state of Israel, a Jewish state with a Jewish majority," Olmert said. "We will try to achieve this in an agreement with the Palestinians."

But he said Israel will act on its own if it cannot reach peace with the Palestinians. This scenario appears increasingly likely following the victory by Hamas' victory in recent Palestinian legislative elections.

Under Olmert's plan, Israel would unilaterally dismantle dozens of settlements deep in the West Bank, while beefing up major settlement blocs and incorporating them inside Israel's borders.

While handing over large chunks of the West Bank to the Palestinians, the plan falls short of Palestinian claims to all of the territory. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.

The go-it-alone approach follows Ariel Sharon's unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip last summer.

Olmert has said he would govern only with parties that accept his programme. Likely partners include Labour, which ran on a social platform advocating a higher minimum wage; the Pensioners' Party, which also advocates more benefits for retirees led by Rafael Eitan, famed in Israel for capturing Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 , and the dovish Meretz party.

Source: China Daily