JERUSALEM, July 12: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won agreement from veteran opposition leader Shimon Peres on Monday to try to forge a unity government that could push through a plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip.

In a warning to rebels in his right-wing Likud party, Mr Sharon threatened to call early elections if they did not back his efforts to broaden the government and ensure the withdrawal.

Mr Sharon, sapped by the departure of former far-right allies furious at the Gaza plan, invited Peres and his centre-left Labour party to look at forming a coalition that could remove Jewish settlers from the occupied territory.

"We will enter negotiations," Mr Peres told Labour parliamentarians after speaking to Sharon. "We must leave Gaza, we must take down the settlements." Israel's oldest political war horses, friends for decades despite their rivalry, met at breakfast to discuss forming a coalition. Peres said further negotiations still depended on winning party acceptance in a ballot on Tuesday.

Sharon's initiative for unilateral "disengagement" from conflict with the Palestinians means abandoning all 21 Gaza settlements and four of 120 in the West Bank by late next year. Both territories were captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel's cabinet approved the withdrawal project after Sharon fired two far-right ministers, but that cost the former general the majority in parliament he will need next year if he is to push through the phases of the US-backed plan. In an indication of how vulnerable Sharon has become, the opposition tied his ruling coalition in a no-confidence motion on the government economic policy on Monday.

COALITION OBSTACLES: Mr Sharon told Likud party members, suspicious of efforts to woo Peres, that he would have to bring in Labour without sufficient backing from the current coalition.