Defense Minister Ehud Barak met Sunday with parents who lost their children in the Second Lebanon War.  Barak agreed with the parents that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert should have taken personal responsibility for mistakes made during the war and resigned following the Winograd Committee’s report. 

Barak promised for some time that his own Labor party would leave the government after the publication of the Winograd report.  He told the parents that he still planned to leave, and would do so “sooner than you think.”

Aides to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Barak’s statements “perplexing.”  If Barak wants to leave the government, he is free to do so, they said.