Israeli pact would make rightist foreign minister

Avigdor Lieberman, a far-right politician whose policies have raised Arab ire and international concern, was designated foreign minister on Monday in a governing pact with Benjamin Netanyahu. Prime minister designate Netanyahu signed up Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu as his first coalition partner, a widely expected move that left the right-wing Likud party leader still short of a majority in parliament. The two parties' accord said they favored the creation of a broad coalition, leaving the door open for centrists such as the Kadima party led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Likud officials have said a "unity government" including Kadima could help avoid friction with U.S. President Barack Obama, who has pledged to pursue Palestinian statehood. Addressing Kadima legislators after the Netanyahu-Lieberman deal was announced, Livni reaffirmed one of her party's main conditions for joining a broad coalition: the continuation of land-for-peace negotiations with the Palestinians. "Joining a (narrow coalition government) and serving as a fig leaf in order to bolster a different policy is certainly not the right thing to do," she said. Netanyahu has proposed shifting the focus of the talks to economic issues. Realizing that both Kadima and the center-left Labor party were unlikely to join a broad coalition, Netanyahu met President Shimon Peres on Monday night and asked him to try to persuade them to join his government, news reports said. Likud's talks with the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, another likely coalition partner, will resume on Tuesday after failing to conclude a deal on Monday. BOYCOTT Lieberman, a native of former Soviet Moldova, has stirred controversy by advocating the trading of land where many of Israel's 1.5 million Arab citizens live for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank in a peace deal with the Palestinians. His deal with Likud would allow Israelis to be stripped of citizenship rights over involvement in what Israel sees as terrorism or espionage. The accord sets a "strategic goal" of toppling Hamas, going beyond Israel's current aim of halting rocket fire from Gaza, and could complicate Western efforts to reopen Gaza border crossings to vital goods. Israeli Arab lawmaker Ahmed Tibi called for an international boycott of Lieberman. "No minister should meet him, especially no Arab minister," Tibi told Reuters. Under Israeli law, Netanyahu has until April 3 to put together an administration and have it approved by parliament. The Likud-Yisrael Beitenyu accord brought swift expressions of concern from Arab and other foreign officials. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana suggested the bloc would no longer do 'business as usual' with an Israeli government that backed away from Western-supported negotiations on creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel. "We will be ready to do business as usual, normally with a government in Israel that is prepared to continue talking and working for a two-state solution," Solana said in Brussels. "If that is not the case, the situation would be different." Lieberman's party won the third largest number of seats in the February 10 election in which Israel swung to the right after a 22-day offensive in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. Livni, whose party won 28 seats to Likud's 27, lost the chance to become premier because she lacked coalition allies. She is seeking a power-sharing deal under which she and Netanyahu would rotate as prime minister.