Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new coalition government took office Monday after a parliamentary approval, further promoting his Gaza withdrawal plan.

According to an official tally, the lawmakers voted 58 to 56 with six abstentions in favor of the alliance between Sharon's Likud party, opposition Labor and a small religious faction UnitedTorah Judaism.

After the vote, the new cabinet which gives Sharon a parliamentary majority took their oaths immediately and the government assumed power.

The new government, with 66 of the 120 seats in parliament, includes the Labor Party and its leader Shimon Peres, who took theoffice of Sharon's second vice deputy and Ofir Pines, the leader of Labor's young guard, as the new interior minister. The other new member is from United Torah Judaism, which agreed to join the coalition without being handed any portfolio.

Sharon has said his new cabinet will vote on his pullout plan this month. According to Sharon's plan, Israel will withdraw its troops and 8,800 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and remove four West Bank settlements.

Sharon lost his parliamentary majority last summer when pro-settler parties withdrew over his plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four small enclaves in the northern West Bank.

Source: Xinhua