Livni asked to form new Israeli government

ISRAELI president Shimon Peres yesterday asked foreign minister Tzipi Livni to form a government, opening the way for the new Kadima party leader to become the second woman prime minister in the country’s history.

Livni will have up to 42 days to put together a coalition. Scandal-hit Ehud Olmert, who resigned as prime minister on Sunday, will remain in office until the next government is in place, either through political negotiations or an election.

Earlier, Peres sounded out parliamentary faction leaders on their preferences for prime minister or whether they wanted an early election ahead of a national ballot due in 2010.

The political uncertainty has dimmed even further prospects of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, which the United States had hoped Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could achieve this year.

If Livni forms a coalition, she will become Israel’s first woman prime minister since Golda Meir in the 1970s.