Peres Threatens to Quit, Wins Crucial Vote

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres narrowly won a crucial vote Monday in his coalition Cabinet after threatening to resign if the balloting went against him.

As a result, Ezer Weizman, a minister without portfolio and a key political ally of Peres, flew to Cairo on Monday night for a controversial “good-will” visit with top Egyptian officials.

Meanwhile, a senior source in the prime minister’s office confirmed that Peres and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak exchanged messages “in recent days” expressing willingness to settle disputes between the two countries at a summit meeting.

13-12 Split for Peres

Monday’s showdown 13-12 vote in Peres’ favor came in a telephone poll of government ministers after the so-called inner Cabinet split 5 to 5 on a motion to approve Weizman’s trip. The smaller group has an equal number of members from Peres’ Labor alignment and the rival Likud bloc, headed by Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and the votes there split along party lines.

Shamir, who is scheduled to take over the prime minister’s job in 18 months under a coalition agreement, opposed Weizman’s trip as an encroachment on his area of responsibility. The full Cabinet took the unprecedented step Sunday of withholding its formal endorsement of the visit pending a debate by the inner Cabinet.

“Poor little me had to decide,” said Religious Affairs Minister Yosef Burg, who cast the deciding ballot Monday.

To have voted otherwise would have meant “disavowing” the prime minister and insulting the Egyptian government, Burg said in a telephone interview. That “would not be helpful for creating the atmosphere we need,” added the 75-year-old head of Israel’s National Religious Party.

Peres had been quoted by Israel radio and television as telling his aides that he would resign if Weizman was forbidden to go.

Before leaving for Cairo on Monday night, Weizman told reporters: “I have not been authorized or not authorized to negotiate. I am merely going for an exchange of views and will report to the Cabinet on my return. The purpose of the visit is a good-will mission to see old friends, to listen and to express my own opinion within the framework of this government.”

Interpretations varied here over the likely long-term impact of what quickly became the most serious Cabinet crisis since the national unity coalition was formed last September.

“I think it was an important test,” said a key aide to Peres. He called the outcome a “happy” one and said the prime minister’s actions “suggest he’s willing to go a long way to carry the day on the peace issue. I think that’s the main issue.”

However, Shamir said the Weizman visit to Cairo is now “meaningless.”

An aide to Shamir said, “I think Mr. Peres will have understood that there are limits--that Mr. Shamir is not willing to be bypassed on matters of foreign policy.” Weizman, this source added, has been “neutralized because the Egyptians now realize he brings with him a bunch of political problems back home.”

Embarrassment to Peres

There was no doubt that the surprise challenge to his authority embarrassed Peres and underlined the limitations of his government in making any significant progress in relations with Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Another Peres adviser said there is “no question” that the incident will have an adverse effect on the prime minister’s delicately balanced coalition. He charged that Shamir had reneged Sunday on an earlier understanding with Peres that Weizman would travel to Egypt, thus undermining what he called one of the key elements that has allowed the unusual national unity government to function.

“When this is violated, we are in trouble,” he said.

Shamir said Sunday that he had agreed to a personal visit by Weizman to Cairo but that it had become clear in recent days that the former air force hero and one-time defense minister was really going to negotiate with the Egyptians.

Possible Summit Meeting

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Al Hamishmar published Sunday, Mubarak adviser Osama Baz said the Weizman visit could pave the way for a Mubarak-Peres summit meeting.

An adviser to Peres said here Monday that no date has been set for any summit and that the timing “depends on some more progress in the substance” of a broad agreement covering a number of issues between the two sides.

He also made clear that Egyptian officials wanted to discuss Mubarak’s recent peace initiative calling for multistage talks leading to direct negotiations between Israel and a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation.

Substance aside, Weizman’s visit is expected to have what a Peres aide called “tremendous symbolic significance.” The moderate Weizman was a key figure in the Camp David negotiations that led to the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, and he was a friend of the late Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat.

Territorial Dispute

Relations between the two countries quickly soured over Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June, 1982, and because of a border dispute involving a pie-shaped sliver of Sinai Peninsula beachfront called Taba.

Referring to Weizman in a speech after Sunday’s rancorous Cabinet meeting, Shamir said caustically, “Now comes a person who has decided that he’s been crowned Israel’s Messiah of peace . . . and that hearts just melt in the face of his charm.”

Weizman is “in the mood to give the Arabs everything,” added Shamir’s deputy foreign minister, Ronni Milo, in an interview with Israel radio. “He’s become the man who takes land away from Jews and gives it to Arabs, contrary to our entire Zionist philosophy.”

Inconclusive Elections

The national unity Cabinet was formed last September after inconclusive parliamentary elections left both Peres’ Labor alignment and the rival Likud bloc with no apparent chance to form a narrowly based government. The two blocs then worked out an agreement to rotate the premiership between the two major leaders.

Weizman’s Yahad Party won three seats in the parliamentary elections. Thus, Weizman, by throwing his weight behind Peres, virtually assured that the Labor leader would be the first prime minister.

Weizman has also said publicly that he would like to be foreign minister if the coalition fails and Labor forms a narrow government.

Peres and Shamir met early Monday morning in an effort to resolve their latest dispute but were unable to reach a compromise. Shamir insisted that Weizman’s trip be postponed indefinitely, but Peres said it must go ahead as planned.

After the inner Cabinet split on the issue, Shamir and his Likud colleagues tried to head off the telephone vote on a legal technicality. But Israel’s attorney general ruled in favor of Peres and Labor, setting up the climactic vote by Burg.