Related: Israel: no plan to attack Iran for now

    JERUSALEM, Dec. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has quit the Likud party to join Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new Kadima party, the Ha'aretz newspaper and Army Radio reported on Sunday.

    Mofaz told a press conference held in Tel Aviv that he felt he could no longer be part of the Likud, which is "drifting farther and farther to the extreme right."

    Sharon's office has confirmed the news. Mofaz made the decision after receiving Sharon's pledge that he could continue to serve as defense minister in the next government should Sharon be re-elected in the general elections due on March 28, 2006.

    "The cooperation between Sharon and myself is the right one from which Israel benefits the most. As of today, I am a Kadima man," Mofaz told reporters.

    "I haven't changed. It's the reality in the Likud that has changed," added Mofaz.

    Mofaz became the seventh cabinet member to jump from Likud to Kadima following a surprise announcement by the then acting Likud chairman Tzachi Hanegbi to quit Likud and join Kadima last week.

    The defense minister turned down a request by Sharon to join him last month, when Sharon quit the party, bringing with him a number of senior Likud members, including Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

    Sharon quit the center-right Likud he confounded over 30 years ago and formed the centrist Kadima, saying that he was fed up with confrontation with Likud hard-liners who were still bitter about Sharon's disengagement plan, under which Israel completed its withdrawal of soldiers and some 8,500 settlers from all Gaza and part of the West Bank in mid-September.

    Soon after the departure of Mofaz, who was previously campaigning for the Likud leadership, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Mofaz left the party because he had fallen behind in the polls.

    Shalom now only faces former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the Likud leadership race set on Dec. 19.

    Shalom told reporters at the prime minister's office that he was the only Likud leader who could stem the erosion which has plagued the Likud since Sharon's quit.

    Shalom said he was looking forward to what will now more or less be a one-on-one race against Netanyahu who, according to Shalom, was too right-wing to stop the drift of personalities from Likud to Kadima.

    The Likud "needs someone who can return the Likud to the nation and I can do it," Shalom said. "The Likud is my home and it's a way of life for me. I'm sorry about anyone who leaves the Likud," he added.

    Over the weekend, Shalom had called on Mofaz to quit Likud leadership primary and back him instead in order to defeat Netanyahu.

    The swelling of Kadima's ranks drew criticism from the Labor party.

    Associates of Labor Chairman Amir Peretz said on Sunday that "Sharon shames Israeli politics by acquiring every politician on sale in a market empty of any ideology or path. Sharon's opportunistic collection is unable to provide a real answer to social issues or to political questions."

    Labor Knesset member Yulie Tamir said "it is becoming clearer from day to day that Sharon's party is becoming a second Likud," adding that "the Israeli public will again have to choose between Labor and the Likud." Enditem