Sharon vows to continue expanding Jewish settlements on West Bank

JERUSALEM - Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, yesterday publicly vowed to continue expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank, despite his admitted differences with President Bush on the issue.

In his most uncompromising comments yet on the settler question, Mr Sharon depicted the planned withdrawal from Gaza as the only way of preserving the largest settlement blocks on the Palestinian side of the pre-1967 border with Israel.

"I am doing everything I can to preserve as much [of the West Bank settlements] as I can," he said.

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post-which will be published in full today-Mr Sharon was reported to have acknowledged that the US and Israel did not, in the paper's words, "necessarily see eye to eye" on settlement expansion.

But he underlined his determination to go ahead with it in defiance of US exhortations by pointing out that settlement growth had always gone ahead in the past, despite formal expressions of US opposition to it.

He added that hundreds of homes were currently being built in two West Bank settlements, Ma'ale Admumim and Betar Illit.

Mr Sharon's series of interviews ahead of the Passover holiday came as the officially agreed ceasefire came under fresh strain when Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a rocket-propelled device which injured an Israeli soldier in a jeep close to the Gaza security fence.

Nevertheless, as both sides held official and ministerial talks on co-ordinating planned disengagement from Gaza, Israel Radio reported that efforts were being made to restart direct discussions between Mr Sharon and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas.

In his interviews yesterday, Mr Sharon also extended his claim on West Bank settlements by declaring that henceforth "Jews will always live in" Hebron.

Although the US President has agreed that the main existing settlement blocks should remain in Israel in any final deal with the Palestinians, no such public endorsement exists in the case of Hebron.

Denying that he would come under pressure after disengagement to start further withdrawals from the West Bank, Mr Sharon repeated to Haaretz that talks on this would await fulfilment by the Palestinians of its obligation to dismantle the armed factions.

In terms which will fuel the claims of critics that the route of the controversial separation barrier is intended as a de facto future border, Mr Sharon indicated that demographics-the future proportion of Jews to Arabs in Israel-had been a factor in not locating the barrier even further towards the east and deeper into Palestinian territory than it already is.

The present route has already been widely criticised -internationally and by the Palestinians-for cutting deep into the occupied West Bank.

Mr Sharon said that an even more easterly location would have left "hundreds of thousands of Palestinians" on the Israeli side of the barrier, which would have been a "major problem."

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