Tel Aviv - Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu plans to present his government early next week, following a vote by the centre-left Labour Party to join his Likud-led government.

In a dramatic and tumultuous meeting of the Labour Party Convention in Tel Aviv late Tuesday, 680 delegates voted for and 507 against party leader Ehud Barak's proposal to join the Netanyahu government.

Netanyahu and Barak drafted a coalition agreement, which was signed after 24 hours of marathon negotiations, just before it was presented to the convention.

Netanyahu has already signed up the ultra-nationalist Israel Beiteinu party of Moldovan-born immigrant Avigdor Lieberman, as well as the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Additionally, he resumed negotiations with another ultra-Orthodox faction - United Torah Judaism (UTJ) on Wednesday morning.

With the Likud, Lieberman, Labour and Shas, he already has a majority of 66 lawmakers in the 120-seat Knesset, the Israeli parliament. With the UTJ, the majority would grow to 71. It is unclear whether he will still plans to include two more nationalist, pro-settler factions, the Jewish Home, with three seats, and the National Union, with four.

Emotions ran high at the Labour Party Convention, with Barak's opponents slamming him for his push to join the Netanyahu government and unleashing a host of accusations at him.

Those ranged from charges of Barak seeking personal gain to others that he was destroying the party's chances of rehabilitating itself from the opposition benches after its term in the current government. Others, however, defended his choice, saying he was serving Israel's best interests.

Israel Beiteinu's controversial leader Lieberman would be foreign minister, while Barak would serve as defence minister, the position he holds in the current administration. The Labour Party will get four other ministerial posts.

Outgoing Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni also criticized Barak for joining the Netanyahu government and said her centrist Kadima party would serve in the opposition as an alternative.

"If I had wanted to, I could also have been in the government," she told Israel Army Radio Wednesday.

Livni had demanded that Netanyahu explicitly express support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, a move he did not make. To Barak, Netanyahu promised to uphold interim peace agreements signed by previous governments and to work toward "regional" peace, but went no further. (dpa)