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Army radio also said the government would commit to working against unauthorised Jewish settlements in the West Bank. With Labour's support, Mr Netanyahu would have 66 seats in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament.

Israel's centre-left Labour party has narrowly voted to join a coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud.

The far right Yisrael Beiteinu and ultra-Orthodox Jewish party Shas have already agreed to join the coalition. The centrist Kadima has so far refused to join over policy differences.

If he won support from all of Labour's MPs, he would command 66 seats in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament.

He wants to have Labour on board in order to calm widespread fears that a narrowly right-wing Israeli government could jeopardise renewed peace efforts with the Palestinians.

About half of the party's 13 lawmakers objected to Mr Netanyahu because of his long-standing opposition to peace efforts which Labour has backed, Haaretz newspaper reports. Mr Netanyahu has refused to sign up to the two-state formula which has underpinned more than 15 years of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

Some delegates chanted "disgrace" as the result came in. Mr Barak is defence minister in the current government and would retain the post in the next government, reports suggest.

Under the draft coalition agreement, Labour would get five cabinet posts and the government would commit to continuing negotiations with the Palestinians and to respecting previous deals made with them. Army radio said the government would commit to working against unauthorised Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

A Likud member of the Knesset, Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, said there was general agreement between Likud and Labour on the main international challenges facing the incoming government.

"Because in practical terms, I don't think that either side really believes that it's possible to reach an agreement with the present Palestinian leadership in the near future."

In what appears to be a concession to win Labour's support, he and Barak agreed a joint platform that would commit the new government to working for a "comprehensive regional agreement for peace and co-operation in the Middle East", according to the Israeli press.Though that platform says the new government will work towards peace with its neighbours and will respect Israel's international agreements, there was no explicit mention of the creation of an independent Palestine.

Binyamin Netanyahu, head of the right-wing Likud party, will be prime minister and possibly finance minister.• Avigdor Lieberman, the far-right head of the Israel Our Home party, who campaigned in favour of a law demanding all Israel's Arabs swear an oath of loyalty to the country as a Jewish state, will be foreign minister.• Ehud Barak (below), head of the Labour party, who last month seemed resigned to going into opposition, will stay on as defence minister.• Eli Yishai, the head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, will be interior minister.

Mr Lieberman's party also wants to introduce a loyalty pledge, which would demand that Israeli-Arabs swear allegiance to Israel as a "Jewish, Zionist and democratic" state, before they can be issued with their ID papers.

Mr Netanyahu has said in the past that he sees no need for the Palestinians to have full separate statehood.

Analysts say the nuclear ambitions of Iran are likely to top the new cabinet's security agenda. In an apparent reference to that effect, Mr Netanyahu said the biggest threat to Israel and the world came from "the possibility of a radical regime armed with nuclear weapons". He further stressed the issue in comments given to a US magazine shortly before he was sworn in. "You don't want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs," he said , in reference to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's belief in the imminent return of a Shia Islamic messianic figure, the Mehdi.