The new Israeli government has set a harsh tone in its first days in office, with statements being issued that could indicate a planned burial for Mideast talks.

A day after he sparked criticism by saying Israel was not bound by a US-backed 2007 agreement to restart peace talks with the Palestinians, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday refused any withdrawal from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria.

"There is no cabinet resolution regarding negotiations with Syria, and we have already said that we will not agree to withdraw from the Golan Heights," Lieberman told the Haaretz daily.

The Golan is a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1981, which Damascus wants back as part of any peace treaty.

It marked the second day running of controversial statements by firebrand Lieberman, which have sparked furious reactions by Palestinians already worried about a cabinet led by Netanyahu, who opposes giving them a state.

"This minister is an obstacle to peace. He will cause harm to Israel first," Yasser Abed Rabbo, an aide to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, told AFP.

"Nothing obliges us to deal with a racist person hostile to peace such as Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Lieberman," he added.

Opposition MPs in Israel were as harsh in their criticism of a man whom critics have branded a "racist" and "fascist" for his regular diatribes against Israeli Arabs.

Tzipi Livni, from whom Lieberman took over the foreign ministry, said that with the statements "Israel in effect announced that it was no longer a partner" in the peace process and called on Netanyahu to distance himself from the comments.

Comparing the Soviet-born one-time bouncer to a "bull in a china shop," Opher Pines-Paz of the centre-left Labour party warned that ultra-nationalist Lieberman was "a strategic threat to Israel."

"This is proof of total irresponsibility," he told public radio. "The damage that he has caused will take years to repair."

Reactions from abroad remained muted.

US President Barack Obama, who has called advancing a two-state solution "critical," called Netanyahu on his assuming office, saying he looked forward to working with him on his concerns abut Iran and reiterating his desire to advance the peace process.

Meanwhile a spokesperson for the US State Department declined to comment on Lieberman's statements, saying Washington was instead focusing on Netanyahu's pledges to continue negotiations with the Palestinians.

A spokesperson for UN chief Ban Ki-moon said that he looked forward to working with Netanyahu including "the resumption of the Middle East peace process, with the aim of achieving an independent and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace with a secure Israel, and a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace as envisaged in Security Council resolutions."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called Lieberman and the two agreed to meet "as soon as possible," an official with the latter's office told AFP.

Lieberman has also received invitations for a visit from counterparts in Italy and Spain and spoken by phone with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

In an attack that was bound to spark more hardline rhetoric from the new Israeli government ministers, a 13-year-old Israeli boy was killed and a seven-year-old wounded on Thursday when an axe-wielding Palestinian went on the rampage in a settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Far-right MPs quickly said the attack was a consequence of policies by the previous Israeli government headed by Ehud Olmert, who had conducted talks with the Palestinians and had removed some of the more than 500 roadblocks in the West Bank.

AFP

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