Peres on verge of joining Sharon as centrist party gathers momentum

Shimon Peres will shortly decide on his political future amid fresh speculation that he could leave the party he led until two weeks ago and join Ariel Sharon ahead of the March general election.

Expectations that Mr Peres, ousted as Labour leader two weeks ago, could endorse the Israeli Prime Minister's new Kadima party in return for a role in a future Sharon-led government were fuelled by tantalising remarks made by him in Barcelona yesterday.

In terms notable for their lack of warmth for Labour or for Amir Peretz, who ousted him, the octogenarian former prime minister who was deputy to Mr Sharon in a coalition government, declared: "The real change is not in the Labour party. The real change is in the Likud party. Mr Sharon took a different direction for a Palestinian state. He wants to continue the peace process."

Mr Peres' much publicised agonising over whether to end his 60-year association with Labour and its forerunner Mapai has become - for now - the main talking point in the fierce competition between Labour and Mr Sharon's new party to capture high-profile figures inside and out of mainstream politics. Mr Peres told Army Radio: "It's not easy to leave a party, after so many years, including as its leader, a party where I was born from the ideological point of view.

"I have to reach a complete decision, and I am considering all the aspects I can ... I expect that within the next two days I will end my deliberations and make an announcement."

Mr Peres' spokesman, Yoram Dori, said after talking to Mr Peres by telephone yesterday: "He will take no decisions until after he returns to Israel tomorrow."

But rumours of Mr Peres' defection were fuelled earlier by that of Dalia Itzik, a Knesset backbencher and an associate of Mr Peres, who joined Kadima. In a parting shot calculated to maximise the damage to her former party, she claimed in a reference to the party normally seen as to the left of Labour, that under Mr Peretz, Labour was "more Meretz than Meretz" - or even to the left of the Israeli Communist Party.

Eitan Cabel, the secretary general of the Labour party, declared that Ms Itzik's move looked like part of a "package deal" in which Mr Peres was also likely to leave. He added: "We spoke about their remaining [in Labour] and not defecting to another party, but apparently things were already sealed, and the talks with us were nothing but a smokescreen."

But Ephraim Sneh, a prominent mainstream Labour figure in the Knesset who has been working amicably with Mr Peretz, expressed disbelief that Mr Peres could desert his party for one led by the Israeli Prime Minister. "This party of Sharon's cannot be a 'home' for a person who has the ideology of peace and of the Labour party," he said. "Sharon is moving with cleverness, with cunning, to set out a map in the west, in Judea and Samaria, that is a recipe for the continuation of the conflict. A man who has worked so hard for the sake of peace, and received a Nobel Prize for it, will not lend his hand to a plan that is a hoax." He added: "I very much hope [Mr Peres] has not changed his world view."

Some Israeli media have said Mr Sharon was unconcerned about luring Mr Peres to his new party until Mr Peretz scored a notable coup by attracting Avishay Braverman, president of the University of the Negev, and a formidable figure in the Israeli establishment, to his party. Mr Braverman, who had been touted as a likely member of the Sharon team, is a possible finance minister in any coalition in which Labour has a part.

Mr Sharon's party yesterday secured the backing of Uriel Reichman, a founder and chairman of the secular, middle-class Shinui party, and another prominent academic who heads the Interdisciplinary Centre in Herzliya. Mr Reichman's defection is a serious blow to Shinui, which is already under pressure from Mr Sharon's attempt to capture the centre ground.

Labour yesterday won the support of Shelly Yachimovitch, a prominent journalist who said she had been attracted by Mr Peretz's social economic policies as an alternative to "this economic right, which has caused such grave damage."