Shamir Gets 3 More Weeks to Get Labor Into Coalition

President Chaim Herzog today granted Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud Party a three-week extension to form a government and urged it to try again to bring the rival Labor Party into a coalition.

Shamir has failed to attract Labor into a broad-based coalition led by his right-wing party. He appears close to forming a narrow coalition with small religious and far-right parties.

Shamir requested the extension after the expiration of a three-week mandate Herzog gave him Nov. 14. Israeli law allows for a three-week extension.

“The country needs a broad government,” Herzog said after meeting Shamir at his residence. “We need a stable government to deal with the challenges and dangers we face,” Herzog added. His remarks were broadcast live by Israel radio.

Electoral Reform

Likud and Labor have been uneasy governing partners since 1984.

The president also urged the new government to reform Israel’s electoral system, which resulted in a stalemate in Nov. 1 elections.

“There is nothing like this system in the entire democratic world,” Herzog said, alluding to the complicated task facing Shamir as he tries to bring together at least eight of 15 parties in the 120-member Parliament to form a majority.

Coalition bargaining since the elections has been characterized by acrimony in both the Likud and the left-leaning Labor Party.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a top Labor official, lashed out at party leader Shimon Peres today, accusing him of conducting secret negotiations with religious parties.

Rabin denounced Peres confidant Yossi Beilin as “the poodle of Peres” for carrying out the talks without the knowledge of other party leaders.

‘An Embarrassment’

Beilin, a member of Labor’s rebellious young guard, noted that he and Rabin have longstanding ideological differences. He told Israel army radio, “Rabin in his old age is an embarrassment to the younger Rabin. I would prefer to remember him the way he was when he was young.”

In the continuing violence in the occupied territories, Israeli troops shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian girl today in a clash with stone-throwing schoolgirls in a Gaza Strip refugee camp, witnesses and hospital officials said. Witnesses told Arab reporters that soldiers opened fire after dozens of pupils at the Shati refugee camp threw stones at the troops.

The girl is the 319th Palestinian killed in the Arab uprising that began last Dec. 8. Most were killed by army gunfire. Eleven Israelis also have been killed.