Sharon cancels US trip after Gaza setback

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, battling to overcome his party's rejection of a US-endorsed Gaza pullout, has cancelled a visit to Washington next week.

Political sources on Sunday said Sharon told his cabinet he would present a new withdrawal proposal for its approval in three weeks.

"The prime minister has decided not to go to Washington. He will be having consultations here in Israel regarding the disengagement plan," his office said, referring to the initiative voted down by the right-wing Likud a week ago.

Sharon had been scheduled to address a policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israeli advocacy group on May 17, and aides said last week a meeting with US President George W. Bush was likely.

But with the fate of the Gaza plan still unclear and an Arab world seething over what it sees as Bush's pro-Israeli slant and US abuse of prisoners in Iraq, the timing for talks with Sharon may not have been right.

Bush last met Sharon at the White House on April 14, voicing strong support for the prime minister's unilateral proposal to evacuate all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four of the 120 in the West Bank.

The president enraged the Arab world by announcing at a news conference with Sharon that Israel could not be expected to vacate all its large West Bank settlements or re-admit Palestinian refugees under any final treaty.

Last week, in an effort to reassure Arab allies, he told Jordan's King Abdullah that Washington would do nothing to prejudice final-status talks between the Middle East foes and said he would expand dialogue with Palestinians.

CONFLICTING SIGNALS

Sharon has vowed to press ahead with "disengagement" from the Palestinians, sending conflicting signals as to how close he would stick to the original blueprint.

"It will take me another three weeks to put the plan together and then I will present it to the government," a political source quoted Sharon as telling the cabinet.

Sharon has said the pullout would boost Israeli security after more than three years of violence. Opponents of the move say leaving Gaza would only "reward terror".

Palestinians fear Sharon's plan is a ruse to annex large tracts of West Bank land they want for their state. Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war.

Bush further riled Palestinian leaders on Saturday by telling an Egyptian newspaper that a 2005 target date, set by an internationally-backed peace "road map", for the creation of a Palestinian state may no longer be realistic.

But he added the United States was committed to the road map and he would make this clear in a letter to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie.

The road map charts reciprocal steps towards the establishment of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2005, including demands the Palestinians halt militant violence and Israel freeze settlement construction.

Qurie is scheduled to meet Bush's top security adviser Condoleezza Rice in Germany in mid-May for what would be his highest-level session with US officials since taking office in late 2003.

Rejecting Bush's view, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said the creation of a state by 2005 was "more than realistic", while Qurie called for stepped up peace negotiations with Israel to meet next year's deadline.

- REUTERS