By NNN-KUNA,
Ramallah : Israeli President Shimon Peres has asked Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to form a new government Monday, a day after scandal-plagued ex-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert officially stepped down.
According to Israeli laws, Livni now has 42 days to form a coalition government in order to avert snap elections that polls indicate would bring the right-wing Likud party of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power.
The Israeli president compressed the allotted week of party consultations into less than a day an a half before appointing Livni. “After consultations with the political parties, the president has asked Kadima party leader Tzipi Livni to form a government,” Israeli radio quoted an Israeli official statement as saying.
Livni warned that Israel risked a long period of political uncertainty if other parties do not rally to a new government.
She has already begun talks with parliamentary factions that could be included in a future coalition, while at the same time pressing members of her own party to close ranks.
Livni called on Netanyahu to join her in a government of national unity, although the opposition leader has repeatedly ruled out becoming a junior partner in a new coalition and has demanded early elections.
Livni, 50, a former Mossad spy who replaced Olmert as head of the centrist Kadima party in a leadership vote last Wednesday, is hoping to become Israel’s second woman prime minister after Golda Meir, who served from 1969 to 1974.