Israeli Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced on Tuesday
afternoon that his centrist Kadima party would seek to form a
coalition government with the Labor party as a senior partner.
Olmert, who heads the Kadima party, made the announcement at a
joint press conference with Labor Chairman Amir Peretz after the
two leaders completed a meeting earlier on Tuesday.
"We are happy to announce that immediately after the president
gives me the mission of putting together a government, we will open
coalition talks that will allow us to form a government in which
the Labor Party will be a senior member," said Olmert, whose Kadima
won 29 seats in last week's poll.
Peretz said that in order to speed up the process, he would ask
President Moshe Katsav to entrust Olmert to form the next
government.
Peretz's Labor party collected 19 seats in the new Knesset of
120 members.
The announcement also indicated that a rift between the two
biggest parties have been sealed following last Tuesday's
election.
However, Olmert and Peretz did not mention the allocation of
portfolios among the parties, because President Katsav has not yet
officially ordered Olmert to establish the coalition.
Olmert told Kadima members on Monday that in order to include
Labor in the coalition, Kadima must give them either the finance or
defense portfolio.
(Xinhua News Agency April 5, 2006)
