Short, not sweet: angry Israeli PM snubs lawmakers

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's prime minister angered opponents on Wednesday by answering their criticisms with a speech in parliament that lasted less than two minutes before he walked off the podium in apparent disgust.

Ehud Olmert, a 35-year veteran of parliamentary debates, was obliged to attend the Knesset session by an opposition motion that forced him to sit through an hour and a half of speakers leveling a series of general complaints at his administration.

When finally he could respond, Olmert rose to the podium to give the briefest of exposes of his policy agenda before saying: "I have grown old in this house and have never before seen or heard such an amorphous, baseless and pointless debate."

Snapping shut his document folder, he concluded, "It serves no purpose but to damage the standing of the Knesset" and walked off.

Timed at just 1 minute and 50 seconds, Israeli media called it one of the shortest such parliamentary speeches on record.

Opposition politicians called it a "mockery".