Barak calls new election after 18 months in office to avert Knesset defeat

The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, bowed to political inevitability last night and announced new general elections a …

The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, bowed to political inevitability last night and announced new general elections a mere 18 months after he was elected to office.

Facing humiliation in a vote on dissolving parliament, having lost his majority as a consequence of failed peace efforts with the Palestinians, he told the Knesset: "I'm not blind . . . You want elections. I'm ready for elections."

A date for the poll, Mr Barak said, would be set "in the next few days," in co-ordination with the opposition Likud. Mr Barak is likely to seek a date as late into next year as possible.

The Likud will presumably press for a date considerably earlier - and the betting is on a compromise sometime in the spring.

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As things stand now, Mr Barak is facing a heavy defeat and the return to power of his hardline predecessor, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr Netanyahu stood down as Likud leader last year but is expected to oust the current opposition leader, Gen Ariel Sharon.

If Mr Netanyahu is indeed returned to power - and opinion polls show him with a considerable advantage over Mr Barak - a government under his leadership would retreat from the peace proposals offered to the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, at the failed Camp David summit in July.

However, Mr Barak is determined to use whatever time he has left before the elections to try to reach an accord with Mr Arafat which would halt the two months of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Simultaneously, he hopes, it would transform his political fortunes and give him a realistic chance of re-election.

Improbable though this may seem, it is not impossible. Aides to Mr Arafat said last night that they would make every effort to reach some kind of accord with Mr Barak ahead of the elections, and that they hoped a "government of peace" would prevail in the vote.

Concerned at Mr Barak's imminent defeat, Mr Arafat was earlier yesterday telephoning Israeli Arab Knesset members and asking them to do what they could - which was very little - to stave off new elections.

Mr Barak, for his part, was publicly outlining new terms for a possible "interim accord" with the Palestinians, evidently designed to be more palatable to Mr Arafat than the Camp David proposals.

Because it had proved difficult to resolve the disputes concerning the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees, Mr Barak said, he wanted "to defer" those issues, and push instead for a deal on matters where agreement did seem possible - including final borders between Israel and a Palestinian state.

Egypt is apparently now working behind the scenes to try to advance an accord. Aides to Mr Barak, for the first time in weeks, were yesterday praising Mr Arafat for what they said was a concerted effort by him to quell shooting incidents in the West Bank and Gaza.

And there was talk of an imminent release by Israel of Palestinian prisoners.

Meanwhile Israel formally denied any connection with an espionage case in Egypt. An Egyptian engineer, Mr Shereef Fawzi Mohamed el-Falali, was charged with spying for Israel.