JERUSALEM, Dec. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Newly elected Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Likud faction meeting on Wednesday that there was no chance of forming an alternative government, Ha'aretz daily said on its on-line edition.

    Netanyahu said it was impossible to garner 61 parliament members' support by Dec. 29, the date when the order for dispersing the parliament goes into effect, and to postpone the elections to their original date of November 2006.

    Likud officials, among them Netanyahu and parliament Speaker Reuven Rivlin, have been trying over the past week to garner the support of 61 out of a total of 120 parliament members to depose Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and to form an alternative government. Netanyahu also announced that he would establish a committee that would draft the Likud's platform.

    Netanyahu presented the main points of the Likud election campaign ahead of the March 2006 elections, based on diplomatic moderation while maintaining Israel's security, a war against poverty, raising living standards and an uncompromising battle against corruption.

    Former Israeli prime minister Netanyahu was elected as Likud's new leader on Dec. 19, getting 47 percent of the votes in the party's primaries to lead it into the March 28 general elections. Netanyahu resigned as finance minister from Sharon's government in August in protest against the disengagement plan, under which Israel completed its withdrawal of soldiers and some 8,500 settlers from all Gaza in mid-September ending a 38-year occupation.

    Likud is facing an uphill battle in the elections since latest opinion polls projected Sharon's Kadima party garnering the most votes if the elections were held now, followed by the center-left Labor and the Likud coming a distant third. Enditem