Withdrawal still in Olmert's plan

JERUSALEM — Israel's new government took office Thursday with a pledge by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to carry out his plan for a substantial withdrawal in the West Bank.

"The borders of Israel that will be shaped in the coming years will be significantly different than the territories now in Israel's hands," Olmert said as he presented his Cabinet to the parliament, or Knesset.

Olmert has said he intends to set Israel's final borders by 2010, removing dozens of Jewish settlements from much of the West Bank while annexing three major settlement blocs to Israel. According to the plan, Israel will pull back unilaterally if it deems that the Palestinians have not met conditions for negotiations.

The new Israeli Cabinet, with 25 ministers, was sworn in after it received parliament's vote of confidence.

Taking the oath of office, Olmert, 60, completed a transition that began Jan. 4, when as deputy prime minister he took the reins of power after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had a massive stroke. Sharon, 78, remains in a coma.

Olmert's governing coalition, whose main partners are his centrist Kadima party and the left-leaning Labor party, controls 67 seats in the 120-member parliament. The coalition also includes the religious Shas party and the Pensioners party.

Some analysts are already labeling the alliance too spindly, and political support too soft, to easily implement Olmert's plan to pull back from much of the West Bank.

"I doubt very much if he will be able to implement a big plan," said Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. "He may well go for a small plan."

Olmert told parliament Thursday that the withdrawal is necessary to preserve Israel's Jewish majority.

"The continued scattered settlement across Judea and Samaria creates an inseparable mixture of populations that will threaten the existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish state," Olmert said, using the biblical term for the West Bank. "Dividing the land in order to ensure a Jewish majority is the lifeline of Zionism."

While outlying settlements would be removed, the main West Bank settlement blocs and all of Jerusalem "will forever be an inseparable part of the sovereign state of Israel," Olmert said.

The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as their future capital and assert that the large Israeli enclaves in the West Bank will prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Olmert said he would seek international support for the withdrawal plan, primarily from the United States and Europe. He is expected to travel to Washington this month to discuss the plan with President Bush.

Addressing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Olmert said he preferred to negotiate a peace agreement, provided the Palestinian Authority disarmed militant groups and kept previous agreements with Israel.

But the Hamas-led Palestinian government has rejected such demands, and Olmert said there could be no negotiation with a "Palestinian government led by terrorist elements."

Israel was prepared to allow time for a change in the Palestinian position, but "when we reach the conclusion that the Palestinian Authority is delaying and not prepared for serious, substantial and fair negotiations ... we will act even without an agreement with the Palestinians," Olmert said.

In an interview published Thursday in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, Abbas appealed to Olmert to resume peace talks immediately.

Although Hamas rejects negotiations with the Israelis, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has said his government would not object if Abbas pursued talks on his own.

Olmert told the parliament he still hopes to add up to three parties to his coalition: the dovish Meretz, ultra-

Orthodox Jewish United Torah Judaism and Israel Beitenu, representing immigrants from the former Soviet Union and led by hawkish Avigdor Lieberman.

Material from the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press is included in this report.