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

DATE: TUESDAY, March 13, 1990                   TAG: 9003133276
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: BEIT BEREL, ISRAEL                                 LENGTH: Medium

PARTISAN MOVE COULD TRIGGER FALL OF ISRAELI GOVERNMENT

The question of who will govern Israel remained in doubt Monday as the Likud bloc's coalition partners authorized a bid to bring down the unity government.

The Labor party's 1,300-member central committee approved a resolution empowering its 39-member bloc in the 120-member Parliament to vote against the Labor-Likud unity government on Thursday, when no-confidence motions will be debated in Parliament.

The resolution, which passed with only one objection, authorized Labor's executive committee and its parliament members to "take the necessary steps to draw the necessary conclusions from the situation."

"The situation" at this point is Labor's refusal to continue serving in the government if the Likud remains unwilling to accept U.S.-backed conditions for moving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward.

A vote of no-confidence, if passed by a majority of members of Parliament who are voting, would end the government.

If a new coalition could not be formed, elections would have to be called. But political leaders doubt new elections would make it any easier to form a new government.

Labor's resolution leaves open the possibility of a compromise that would save the government. If the government does fall, each side wants to blame the other.

If Labor acted definitively now to topple the government, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, leader of the Likud, probably would remove all 11 Labor ministers from the government.

That removal would take effect in 48 hours, or before Parliament considered the no-confidence votes already scheduled for debate. That means the Labor ministers would be out of the government by Thursday.

The resolution is designed to blur Labor's next move enough to force the Likud leader, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to come up with a counter move short of removing the Labor ministers from the government.

The Likud is in a corner, Vice Premier Shimon Peres, the Labor leader, said, because if Shamir says no to U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, "he'll endanger relations with the United States. If he says yes, he'll endanger relations with his own party."

by CNB