Pullout From West Bank Town a Success, Peres Says : Mideast: Acting prime minister tours region, calls Israeli hand-over of Janin to Palestinians ‘satisfactory.’

Acting Prime Minister Shimon Peres toured the northern West Bank on Tuesday and declared that Israel’s hand-over of the town of Janin to the Palestinians was a success.

“Many people were either skeptical or worried” about Israel’s redeployment in the West Bank, Peres told reporters at his first news conference since the Nov. 4 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “The first goal was completed in a satisfactory way.”

The last Israeli troops pulled out of Janin early Monday, handing the town’s security over to several hundred Palestinian police. Israel is scheduled to begin evacuating Kalqilya, Tulkarm and Nablus in coming days, and Peres said the pullout of Israeli troops from most West Bank towns and villages will be completed before Christmas.

Peres, who now also serves as acting defense minister and foreign minister, surveyed the West Bank by helicopter before visiting the District Coordinating Office near Janin, where Israeli and Palestinian security forces will coordinate security matters. He then drove in a heavily guarded convoy to a rocky hilltop outside Kalqilya that will serve as that town’s District Coordinating Office.

Peres was flanked by a quartet of armed guards from Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, as he spoke to reporters. He said he feels comfortable with the new, tightened security measures imposed after a lone gunman fatally shot Rabin at point-blank range in Tel Aviv.

Noting that the hand-over of Janin was completed a few days ahead of schedule, Peres said both Israel and the Palestinians have learned lessons from the hand-over in 1994 of Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho to the Palestinian Authority.

In the West Bank, he said, “there is a highly sensitive mixture of political considerations and security needs” to be taken into account by both sides. The goal, Peres said, is “not to disturb the normal life of people in the West Bank, whether Arab people or Jewish people.”

Also Tuesday, Israel charged 64 right-wing Jews with involvement in attacks on Palestinians or their property in 1994 and this year, the Reuters news service reported. It quoted Boaz Goldenberg, a spokesman for Israeli police in the West Bank, as saying 10 more will be indicted in a Jerusalem court today.

Meanwhile, speculation is mounting in Israeli political circles that Peres will choose to hold on to the portfolio of defense minister, a portfolio that Rabin retained. Lacking the military credentials of Rabin, Peres may choose to strengthen his image by overseeing his nation’s most important ministry, his close aides have told reporters.

“I’m as concerned as the late prime minister was with the security of Israel,” Peres said when reporters asked his intentions Tuesday. But he declined to say how he will distribute Cabinet portfolios.

President Ezer Weizman began consulting Tuesday with each party in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, on forming the next government. Under Israeli law, when a prime minister dies in office, his government becomes a caretaker government until the president asks the head of the Knesset party he deems most likely to succeed to form a new government.

Likud, the largest opposition party, told Weizman on Tuesday that it supports giving the mandate to form a government to Peres and his Labor Party. So did every other party Weizman consulted with. Weizman is expected to finish his consultations and give the nod to Peres today, and a new government is expected to be presented to the Knesset for a vote of confidence by week’s end.

Labor Party officials have said they are holding talks with Orthodox religious parties aimed at broadening Labor’s narrow coalition. It can count on 63 votes in the 120-seat Knesset at the moment.

The Orthodox religious parties have indicated that they are unwilling to join Labor’s center-left government but may agree to withhold support for motions of no-confidence brought against the government over its peace policies.