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Last update - 13:47 15/08/2008
Barak: Kadima can't lead Israel - it can't even decide when to hold primaries
By Mazal Mualem, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Tags: Kadima, Labor, Ehud Barak

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Friday launched a fresh attack on the Kadima party, calling it a faction of politicians incapable of making decision.

"Despite the challenged placed before the State of Israel and the decisions that need to be made, the Kadima candidate weren't even able to decide when to hold their party primaries without Labor's intervention," Barak told party activists in Tel Aviv.

Barak told Army Radio earlier this week that Kadima front-runner Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was unfit to make decisions regarding Israel's security and that the pride she takes in her contribution toward the passing of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 - which brought the Second Lebanon War to an end and has been stridently criticized in Israel - casts serious doubt on her judgment.
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"Running a country is more complex than merely transferring messages from public relations departments to television networks," Barak told interviewers.

Barak, who insisted on calling Livni by her full name, Tzipora, continued to attack her lack of experience throughout the interview, saying "I am not convinced that the foreign minister is fit to answer questions on important security issues that an Israeli prime minister has to be able to answer; not at 3 A.M. and not at 3 P.M."

Livni, for her part, recently spoke of Barak's "panicked escape from Lebanon."

The defense minister responded Wednesday, saying that he had spent ten years at the center of painful, complex and difficult decisions involving human lives. "I know that being in that room, and being there when decisions are made, does not make you fit to make them," Barak added.

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