The Winograd panel to examine the events of the Lebanon war will not be able to make recommendations regarding Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said last night on Channel 10.

"The prime minister can remove a minister from office, a minister can remove an official in his ministry. With regard to the prime minister, no one has the authority to dismiss him except the public during elections or the Knesset by a vote of no-confidence," he said.

However, Mazuz added, "the prime minister is not immune," because while the committee's conclusions are recommendations to the cabinet, "if the committee sees fit to make recommendations regarding the prime minister, they will be placed before the Knesset and the public and the prime minister will have to deal with them as the game rules of the system dictate."

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Mazuz also said he had intervened to settle the differences between Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert and the State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss regarding the latter's planned scrutiny of the workings of the home front during the war. "I spoke with the comptroller about two weeks ago and asked him to straighten things out," Mazuz said. "Contrary to an earlier announcement by the cabinet that it would assign the comptroller tasks by virtue of the State Comptroller's Law, the cabinet will not be asking the comptroller to perform any task, and will allow him to select the issues to be examined," Mazuz added.

Mazuz also said the State Prosecutor's Office would shortly be finishing its work following the comptroller's report of alleged political appointments by Olmert when he was minister of trade, industry and employment. Mazuz will then have to decide whether to open a criminal investigation against Olmert on the matter. "An indictment against Tzachi Hanegbi in the political appointments affair does not mean that every political appointment is automatically criminal," Mazuz said. "For it to be criminal there must be an accumulation of certain circumstances," he added.