Rabin Is Formally Asked to Form Government : Israel: ‘Serious challenges’ await, president tells prime minister-to-be.

Israel’s president on Thursday tapped Yitzhak Rabin to be the country’s next prime minister as Rabin’s pledges for a freeze on settlements were clouded in the first negotiations with potential coalition partners.

President Chaim Herzog, whose post is largely ceremonial, met with Rabin at the presidential residence here to grant him the right to form a Cabinet. Rabin’s Labor Party won 44 seats in the 120-member Knesset, or Parliament. He needs 61 to win majority backing for his government.

“Serious challenges will confront the government that is to be established--hopefully rapidly,” Herzog told Rabin, evidently urging him to avoid the theatrical horse-trading that has marked past coalition talks.

On paper, Rabin’s chances to speedily construct a majority government appear favorable. The pro-peace Meretz party won 12 seats, and Rabin could probably forge a majority with Shas, a party representing religious, so-called Oriental Jews--those of North African and Middle Eastern origin--which won six seats. Even without Shas, Rabin can count on a pair of Arab-based parties, with six seats, to grant him a vote of confidence.

However, Rabin has decided to woo Tsomet, a far-right party that collected eight seats and that is committed to putting up settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Rabin was given the customary three weeks to form a government, a period usually renewable for another three weeks.

“I am convinced that the last elections make it possible to form a government quickly,” Rabin commented to reporters as he left Herzog’s residence.

In guidelines he issued for holding talks with Meretz and Tsomet, Rabin dropped references to a settlement freeze, which has been a mainstay of his plans to speed up Middle East peace talks and repair relations with Washington. Instead, Rabin promised to “act to strengthen the settlements along the confrontation lines”--the Jordanian border and the Golan Heights adjacent to Syria.

Omission of a specific pledge for a settlement freeze does not preclude Rabin from stopping construction throughout most of the rest of the West Bank and Gaza, his supporters insisted. Further wording pledging to take no steps to hinder the peace talks is meant to cover a settlement freeze, they said.

Neither Tsomet nor Meretz were pleased with Rabin’s position. “I’m not going to naively accept formulas which (Labor) claims are general statements but which will allow them later on to do anything they want,” Tsomet leader Rafael Eitan told the English-language Jerusalem Post.

“The document is unacceptable,” remarked Yossi Sarid, a leader of Meretz.

Independent observers saw in Rabin’s approach an effort to reconcile the irreconcilable. “The discussion of the Labor coalition guidelines . . . has created a thick cloud of code words, slogans and formulas which are intended to facilitate finding a common denominator between contradictory positions,” wrote Meron Benvenisti, an expert on the West Bank and Gaza, in the Haaretz newspaper.

Rabin distinguishes between “political settlements”--those meant to put all of the West Bank and Gaza under irreversible Israeli control and eventual sovereignty--and “security settlements,” those designed to shore up Israel’s current border with Jordan and Syria and the land along the Jordan River in the West Bank, which was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Middle East War.

In frequent public statements, Rabin said it is necessary for Israel to divest itself of heavily populated Palestinian regions in order to preserve the large Jewish majority of the state of Israel. About 1.7 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza. More than 100,000 settlers live in the disputed territory, most of them in eastern areas along the 1967 border and near Jerusalem.

The invitation to Tsomet to join the Cabinet is designed to ward off opposition to peace talks from Israel’s right wing. Rabin has pledged to speed up the talks, which have gone on sporadically since last October. He is offering Palestinians self-rule for a period preceding final talks on the status of the land.

Rabin hopes to circumvent Tsomet’s objections by promising to hold a referendum on any agreement reached with the Palestinians. “It is better to have vague coalition guidelines which lead to peace negotiations than to have unequivocal declarations which interfere with the formation of a government, without which there can be no negotiations,” wrote the pro-Labor Davar newspaper in an apologetic editorial.

Rabin has several cards to play if Tsomet balks. He can try to attract religious parties whose main concern is to win government funding for schools and social services for their dependent scholar communities. In a pinch, he can form a narrow government with Tsomet and count on Arab votes for support.

If Meretz refuses, it would leave Rabin in the uncomfortable position of having to renew a power-sharing arrangement with the right--either with Shamir’s defeated Likud Party or an amalgam of far-right and religious parties.