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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/884445.html

Last update - 20:44 21/07/2007
Lieberman urges establishing emergency gov’t to face Iranian threat
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent

(excerpted)

Minister of Strategic Threats Avigdor Lieberman on Saturday called for the establishment of an emergency national unity government in light of the strategic threat posed by the tightening ties between Syria and Iran.

The right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu patry head urged Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the chairman of the opposition Benjamin Netanyahu to form an alliance after the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Ashraq Al-Awsat reported Saturday that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had pledged to help Syria conduct nuclear research during a visit to Damascus earlier this week.

In exchange, Syria agreed not to engage in peace talks with Israel, the newspaper reported. According to the report, Iran also pledged to provide Syria with $1 billion in military aid to purchase arms from Russia and North Korea.

In response to this report, Lieberman said that the relations between Syrian President Bashar Assad and Ahmadinejad “require Israel to reevaluate the political and military preparation” and added that “the Iranian threat is situated outside any political discussion, and therefore I urge Prime Minister Olmert and opposition chair Netanyahu to consider forming an emergency national unity government.”

On Friday, Olmert called on Assad to begin direct peace negotiations, without American mediation. The report was filed by the newspaper’s internationally respected Iranian correspondent Ali Nouri Zadeh, and is based comments made by an Iranian source who followed the talks in Damascus. . .

During his visit to Damascus on Thursday, Ahmadinejad met with Assad, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, and Hamas political chief Khaled Meshal. Ahmadinejad welcomed what he called Hezbollah’s victory over Israel in last summer’s war in Lebanon and called for a similar “victory” this summer. . .