Sharon agrees to hold early elections

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today agreed to hold early elections, possibly as soon as February, kicking off a political campaign certain to freeze all moves to restart middle-east peace talks.

After meeting with Sharon this morning, Labour Party leader Amir Peretz said the two men had discussed holding the ballot between late February and the end of March, instead of next November as scheduled.

Sharon spokesman Asaf Shariv said the prime minister wanted to hold elections as soon as possible.

Sharon plans to meet with other parliamentary faction leaders to discuss possible elections dates before Monday, when Israel’s parliament is scheduled to holds a preliminary vote on whether to dissolve the government, Shariv said.

The Israeli election campaign, combined with Palestinian parliamentary elections scheduled for January, would postpone efforts to build on the momentum from Israel’s recent pullout from the Gaza Strip to spark new peace moves after five years of Israel-Palestinian violence.

Peretz, head of the second-largest party in Sharon’s coalition, told a news conference that Sharon had agreed to choose an election date by Monday.

“I’m letting him choose a date in that period between the end of February and the end of March and whatever date he chooses is acceptable to me. The earlier the better,” Peretz said.

The call for early elections gained momentum when Peretz was elected Labour leader last week on a platform that included pulling out of the government and forcing an early poll.

Peretz defeated veteran Labour head Shimon Peres, who led the party into the coalition to support the Gaza pullout, which sparked a rebellion within Sharon’s hard-line Likud faction that threatened to bring down the government before the withdrawal.

Peretz’s victory left Sharon with little choice but to abandon his efforts to keep his government together.

“The moment it became clear to me that the existing political structure was breaking up I reached the conclusion that the best thing for the country is to have elections as quickly as possible,” the Yediot Ahronot newspaper quoted Sharon as saying.

“If possible, we shall go to the people in February.”

“In the complex and complicated reality in which the country finds itself, I have no intention of standing at the head of a minority government for months on end,” Yediot quoted Sharon as saying.

Peretz, a union leader who opposes the Sharon government’s staunchly free market policies, wants early elections as part of his plan to return Labour to its socialist roots and reach out to downtrodden voters as an alternative to Likud.

Complicating the election landscape are the challenges Sharon faces within Likud, most prominently from former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some Sharon allies have been pushing the premier to quit his hard-line party and form a new centre party.

Shariv said he didn’t not know when Sharon would decide whether to stay in Likud or bolt.