Collapse of Cabinet May Aid Peace Bid, Carter Says

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter welcomed the apparent collapse of Israel’s coalition government Tuesday, predicting that a new united government “might bode better for a strong move toward peace.”

“I’ve always had the personal feeling that leadership by either the Likud or Labor is better than having a coalition government, which in my opinion reaches the lowest common denominator of both and almost guarantees timidity and a stalemate,” Carter told reporters here on the first stop of a nine-day fact-finding tour of the Middle East.

Carter, returning to one of the countries involved in the historic Camp David accords he brokered more than a decade ago, said he is optimistic about prospects for convening a peace dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, even if Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s hawkish Likud Party takes over the government.

“Even if the Likud should triumph, and have clear control of the Israeli government, I think this might bode better for a strong move toward peace than to have this stalemated coalition government,” Carter said. He recalled his own early misgivings when Menachem Begin, a seeming hard-liner, won election as Israel’s prime minister in 1977, yet went on to participate in the Camp David negotiations and sign a peace treaty with Egypt.

“I never dreamed that the Likud under him would move forward in a courageous way toward peace,” he said. “But I was wrong. And it was because he had the entire responsibility on his shoulders, and he showed superb political courage in joining with (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat to find peace.”

Shamir fired Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres from the Israeli Cabinet on Tuesday in a dispute over the stalled peace process. That triggered the resignation of the other 10 Labor Party ministers and the apparent collapse of the 15-month-old ruling coalition.

New elections and the formation of a new government could delay for months the start of any direct peace talks with Palestinians over the status of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. But Carter predicted Tuesday that the current proposal for elections in the territories will bear fruit.

“I think it’s going to come,” he said, “and the reason I believe this is the Palestinians, the Egyptians, the U.S. officials and the majority of the Israelis want to have some effort made toward peace.”

Carter’s private Middle East visit has no connection to the U.S. government, and he described it as “mostly trying to learn myself” about prospects for peace in the region. But diplomats here said that Carter, as mediator of the Camp David accords, has a personal interest in rekindling the peace process.

Today, Carter is scheduled to fly to Damascus for meetings with Syrian President Hafez Assad.