Special report: Israel's General Election

    Special report: Crisis between Israel and Palestinians

    JERUSALEM, May 4 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised on Thursday to carry out further disengagement from the occupied West Bank "in order to assure a solid Jewish majority in Israel."

    Presenting his new coalition government for parliament approval, the 60-year-old Olmert vowed again to unilaterally set the Israeli final borders by 2010 in the absence of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

    Address the Knesset (parliament) session, Olmert said that holding isolated Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) put Israel in danger.

    Olmert insisted that he would retain major settlement blocs in the West Bank and keep Jerusalem as united capital.

    Olmert said the unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank last September was a prelude to his convergence plan, which would remove 70,000 settlers from enclaves scattered throughout the West Bank to settlement blocs close to the pre-1967 war Green Line border.

    Olmert said that peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was impossible as long as the radical Hamas remained in power.

    "A Palestinian government led by a terror organization will not be partner for negotiations," he said.

    Israel has banned contact with the PNA since the Hamas-led government was sworn in on March 29 and refused to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

    Olmert's coalition cabinet is set to be approved and sworn in by parliament on Thursday, four months after Ariel Sharon's stroke and five weeks after the elections.

    The new coalition grouping four parties - Kadima, Labor, Shas and the Gil Pensioners Party - controls 67 out of the Knesset's 120 seats and is sure to win a parliamentary vote of confidence scheduled for 8 p.m. (1700 GMT).

    Olmert will immediately focus on the long overdue 2006 state budget that was postponed by the elections.

    Olmert, whose Kadima party won 29 seats in the March 28 general elections, was formally tasked with forming a new coalition government by Israeli President Moshe Katsav on April 6. Enditem