U.S. to Stay Out of Israeli Coalition Dispute

Washington will not pressure the Israeli Labor Party to remain in its fragile coalition government with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir despite an internal dispute over elections in the occupied territories, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

“No, that is something that the parties in Israel have to decide for themselves,” John Kelly, assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee.

Labor Party leader Shimon Peres this week urged the party to withdraw from the coalition government with Shamir’s Likud Party because of its new, hard-line conditions for elections in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The New York Times and the Washington Post reported Wednesday that Washington is urging Labor to remain in the coalition. At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher called the reports “patently absurd.”