Deadlocked Israeli Cabinet Rejects Egypt Proposal of Palestinian Talks in Cairo

JERUSALEM —  Israel’s divided inner Cabinet today rejected an Egyptian peace plan calling for talks with a Palestinian delegation in Cairo.

After two days of debate, the 12 leaders of the coalition government of the rightist Likud Party and the center-left Labor Party voted along party lines and deadlocked 6 to 6 on the issue.

The tie vote automatically defeated a proposal by Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres, head of Labor, to accept the Egyptian invitation.

“Israel today suffered a severe setback,” said Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Labor.

All Labor ministers in the policy-making inner Cabinet voted to support the Egyptian plan, and all Likud ministers voted to reject it. Peres and other Labor ministers met immediately to discuss their next step.

Police Minister Chaim Bar-Lev, also of Labor, called for the party to leave the government. But Rabin said he first wanted to see the reaction of the Egyptians and the international community.

‘New Political Situation’

“We have a new political situation. We’ll convene our party institutions and decide about how we proceed,” Peres said.

In Cairo, a senior PLO official said that Israel’s rejection of the plan puts the Middle East peace process on hold and that only the United States can solve that problem.

“Despite all efforts by Egypt and President (Hosni) Mubarak, . . . the intransigence of (Prime Minister Yitzhak) Shamir and his Likud bloc takes us back again to stagnation,” said Nabil Shaath, a key political adviser to PLO chief Yasser Arafat.

“The situation calls for movement by the United States, because it holds the key to Israel,” he said.

Shaath, a wealthy Cairo-based businessman, chairs the political committee of the Palestine National Council, the PLO parliament-in-exile. He is considered a moderate, and his name has been mentioned as a possible participant in peace talks.

Many leaders of Shamir’s Likud viewed the Egyptian invitation, involving meetings with Palestinians from outside the occupied territories, as a trick to get Israel to talk indirectly to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

‘Not the End’

Avi Pazner, a senior aide to Shamir, said that Labor had been “hasty” in forcing a vote in the inner Cabinet and that there was no reason for the year-old government to fall apart.

“It’s not the end of the peace initiative and not the end of the government,” Pazner said.