Says defense post too important for someone who's unqualified, uninterested.
By JPOST.COM STAFFlieberman 298.88(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman (read his JPost blog) called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday morning to remove Labor leader Amir Peretz from the post of defense minister and give him another ministry even before the upcoming party primaries.
Lieberman told Army Radio that "the defense portfolio is of too much importance for someone who is not only not appropriate, but not interested, to hold it."
His statements came after Peretz said on Tuesday night that he would swap the defense portfolio for the finance portfolio if he won the Labor primaries.
Peretz says he'd take Finance Ministry
"On May 28, on the night that I am re-elected to head the Labor party, I will inform the prime minister of my intention to revise the coalition agreement and to demand the office of the Treasury," Peretz told supporters at a Pessah toast.
Peretz originally sought the finance portfolio during coalition talks last April, but failed in the bid and accepted Olmert's offer of the Defense Ministry instead.
Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.
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