Livni 'not bound by Olmert'
2008-11-11 14:09
Jerusalem - Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni distanced herself on Tuesday from comments by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert calling for painful territorial concessions for Middle East peace.
In an interview with army radio, Livni, who will lead Olmert's centrist Kadima party into a snap February election, said she was not bound by his policies.
"I am bound by the Kadima platform that I drafted and in which I laid down principles for negotiations with the Palestinians that the whole world can support," said Livni, who is Israel's lead negotiator in the peace talks.
"It is possible to conduct the negotiations in my own way without having to arrive at the outcome raised by the outgoing prime minister."
In a speech to Parliament on Monday marking the anniversary of the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Olmert said Israel needed to give up large tracts of land in the West Bank, including Arab east Jerusalem, and on the Golan Heights, in exchange for peace.
"There were times when we wanted to seal our presence on every inch of land - and I was one of those people - but we were wrong," he said to jeers from right-wing MPs.
Olmert had made similar comments at a memorial ceremony by Rabin's graveside on Monday.
"If we are determined to preserve the Jewish and democratic character of the state of Israel, we must inevitably relinquish, with great pain, parts of our homeland, and we must relinquish Arab neighbourhoods in Jerusalem," he said.
The comments drew accusations from the right-wing opposition that the outgoing premier was abusing Rabin's memory for political ends.
"Olmert's speech was a disgraceful exploitation of the official occasion for a sermonising political speech in the spirit of the radical left," charged MP Gidon Saar, whose Likud party is running neck-and-neck in the opinion polls with Kadima.
"Rabin is turning over in his grave after Olmert overtook him from the left," said Zvulun Orlev from the pro-Jewish settler National Religious Party.
- AFP