Middle East: Israel's Labour Party voted yesterday in favour of joining with Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's right-wing Likud in a governing coalition dedicated to carrying out a Gaza withdrawal.
Party officials said Labour's Central Committee overwhelmingly approved the partnership, which will help Mr Sharon avoid an early election and is conditional on him fulfilling a pledge to appoint Labour Party leader Mr Shimon Mr Peres as his second deputy prime minister.
Mr Peres (81) cannot assume the post until an Israeli law limiting a prime minister to a single deputy is amended, a process that could delay the swearing in of a new government for up to several weeks.
Mr Peres, awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for interim self-rule deals with the Palestinians in the early 1990s, pushed to join forces with Sharon to carry out a plan to remove all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank in 2005.
Labour's entry into the government could also help restart stalled peace talks after Palestinians vote on January 9th for a successor to the late President Yasser Arafat.
"We will have a respectable standing within the government, the true arena for making significant political and social changes," Mr Peres told the Central Committee.