Sharon Has Peres in Mind for Post

Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon wants Shimon Peres to be foreign minister although he has not formally made the offer, an official said Saturday.

Sharon has already invited outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Barak to be defense minister in a coalition government that would include Sharon’s right-wing Likud Party and Barak’s center-left Labor Party.

Barak did not reject the offer outright, even though he had said Tuesday after his crushing election defeat that he was resigning and dropping out of politics for now.

Peres and Sharon have not met since the election, the official said. However, Sharon’s aides have informed Peres’ aides that the premier-elect would very much like to have Peres as foreign minister, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Peres is a veteran statesman who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to the 1993 Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. He is an avowed political dove, and his appointment as foreign minister would help bring international legitimacy to Sharon, who has been at pains to mellow his hard-line image.

Sharon spoke Friday with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and expressed a desire to seek ways to peace, and a willingness to ease the economic plight of the Palestinian population if the Palestinians halt the current fighting.

On Saturday, a Sharon aide denied reports that the premier-elect had arranged a meeting with Arafat. The former general is sticking to his position that Israel should not negotiate under fire, the aide said.

Meanwhile, Israel said it will not cooperate with a U.N. human rights mission that arrived for a fact-finding tour of Palestinian areas.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Yaffa Ben-Ari said the mandate of the mission is “biased and unacceptable to us, and its findings are predetermined.”

The mission was appointed in October by the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which adopted a resolution accusing Israel of “widespread, systematic and gross violations of human rights.”

The team consists of Richard Falk, an American professor of international law at Princeton University; South African John Dugard of Leiden University in the Netherlands; and Kamal Hussein, a former prime minister of Bangladesh.

After meeting with Arafat late Saturday in Gaza, Dugard said that if Israel does not cooperate, the mission will obtain its information by other means.

“If the Israeli government is not going to give us the information, we will work on that information from Israeli” nongovernmental organizations, he said.

Next, the team will visit the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Heavy fighting erupted Saturday between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers at Rachel’s Tomb in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Palestinians and Israeli soldiers also exchanged fire Saturday at El Khader, a village near Bethlehem. No injuries were reported.

Israeli soldiers lightly wounded two Palestinians who were among a group throwing stones at passing Israeli cars near Nablus in the West Bank, an army spokesman said.

A grenade was thrown at an Israeli-fortified position on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, and a mortar shell landed in the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, just south of Gaza City. No one was hurt in either attack.

Also Saturday, a 17-year-old Palestinian shepherd killed Friday by Israeli fire was buried in Gaza.