Barak Mulls Forming National Unity Government If Summit Fails

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak will consider forming an emergency national unity government with the Likud opposition if the Camp David summit ends in failure, Yisrael Ba'aliya Party leader Natan Sharansky said on Sunday.

Sharansky said, in a release to the media, that Barak told him this by phone Saturday night from Camp David in Maryland, the United States, where he is holding a crucial summit with Palestinian National Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in a bid to hammer out a peace deal to end the half-century Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

Sharansky, the former interior minister who quit the government on the eve of Barak's departure for the summit together with the two religious parties in the coalition -- the National Religious Party (NRP) and the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, told Barak that if he agrees to share sovereignty over Jerusalem with the Palestinians, he would be "the first Jewish leader in 3,000 years to divide Jerusalem."

This was their first phone conversation since Barak left for the summit on July 10. Following his withdrawal from the government, Sharansky has set up a "protest tent" outside the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, calling for the establishment of a national unity government when the country is to make fateful decisions with the Palestinians.

NRP Chair and former Minister of Construction and Housing Yitzhak Levy said that Barak is preparing the public in Israel for his return from Camp David without an agreement.

During a telephone conversation, Levy told Barak that compromises on Jerusalem would tear the country apart.

The Israeli and Palestinian negotiation teams at Camp David have been engaged in tense negotiations under the direct involvement of U.S. President Bill Clinton, who was replaced by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright over the weekend while attending a G-8 summit in Okinawa in Japan.

The issues at stake include the status of Jerusalem, borders, water resources, the future of Jewish settlements and the Palestinian refugees. While significant progress has reportedly been made on most issues, the status of Jerusalem remains the sticking point which brought the summit to the verge of collapse last week prior to Clinton's departure for the G-8 meeting.

Barak has vowed to keep a united Jerusalem under Israeli control which is one of the "red lines" he took to Camp David, although aides have hinted he could accept sharing sovereignty in some parts of Arab East Jerusalem.

There has also been strong opposition inside Israel against attempts to divide Jerusalem, home to holy sites of Islam and Christianity, as well as Judaism.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, have been demanding full sovereignty over east Jerusalem which Israel captured during the 1967 Six-day War.

Contrary to press leaks that there have been U.S. bridging proposals over Jerusalem, Asad Abdel Rahman, the Palestinian Liberation Organization's Washington representative told Voice of Palestine radio outside the West Bank city of Ramallah that no U.S. proposals have been put forth at the summit.

He said that there would be no peace deal without full Palestinian sovereignty over east Jerusalem and that the Palestinian position at Camp David is well known to both Israel and the U.S..

In the meantime, a senior Israeli source at Camp David told the media late Saturday that the mood in the Israeli delegation was somber.

He said that despite Clinton's optimistic tone prior to his departure from the three-day economic summit in Okinawa, chances for a deal seemed to be diminishing.

The source predicted that Clinton would have just 24 hours from the time he returns to take stock and try to turn things around.

Israeli officials said earlier that Barak's chief of staff planned to leave on Sunday. About 20 of the 50 experts in Barak's delegation had already gone home "because of a lack of progress in the negotiations and a lack of work to do," Israeli officials said late Saturday.

The group of senior Israeli officials and technical experts were standing by at a facility near Camp David to work out the nuts and bolts of a final Middle East peace agreement.

Clinton left Okinawa early Sunday and was expected to return to Andrews Air Force Base at 1950 GMT and go directly to Camp David.

The U.S. president rescued the peace talks from the brink of collapse Wednesday before heading for the G-8 summit in Japan.

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