Barak faces no-trust votes on eve of crucial summit

Barak faces no-trust votes on eve of crucial summit
ASSOCIATED PRESS

JERUSALEM, JULY 10: His coalition in tatters, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak faced three no-confidence votes today before his departure for a fateful summit with the Palestinians at Camp David.

Barak, who was to have left for the United States this morning, postponed his departure until after the vote.

The opposition Likud party was in high spirits after three right wing parties quit the ruling coalition because they opposed territorial concessions which they feared Barak would make to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the negotiations to be brokered by US President Bill Clinton.

The ultra-Orthodox Shas party and the Russian immigrants party Yisrael B'Aliya quit the coalition yesterday and the head of the National Religious Party, Housing Minister Yitzhak Levy, said he would submit his resignation today.

Likud chairman Ariel Sharon said Barak does not have the support of the nation and urged him not to go to Camp David. Likud leaders called on Foreign Minister David Levy, who is boycotting the summit, to "return home" to the Likud, from which he defected during the term of Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Levy refused to go to the summit because he believed it had no chance of success since the Palestinians had shown no flexibility at all during the recent months of negotiations.

Barak said his mandate is from the nation, not from parliament, because he was elected directly by an unprecedented majority. Nothing would stop him from leaving any stone unturned in the search for peace with the Palestinians, he said.