US envoys to press Sharon on barrier, Gaza plan

10.30am

JERUSALEM - The United States is sending envoys next week to push Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for changes in Israel's West Bank barrier and help decide whether to back his plan to uproot Gaza settlements.

Word of the new US diplomatic mission followed Israel's announcement on Thursday that it would not attend a World Court hearing on whether it should tear down the barrier, which cuts into territory Palestinians want for a state.

Israel says the network of metal fence and concrete walls is meant to stop suicide bombers and has already thwarted dozens of attacks. Palestinians condemn the project as a land grab.

Sharon's office said special legal advisers feared the World Court session set to begin February 23 in The Hague would lend credence to a case that Israel sees as politically motivated and beyond the tribunal's jurisdiction.

But Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whose government has brought the case with UN backing, said in the West Bank city of Ramallah that Israel's decision showed it was "incapable of defending itself under international law".

Diplomatic sources said senior US officials being dispatched to the region wanted to win a firm Israeli commitment to re-route the barrier. Israel has signalled its willingness to cut out some of the loops planned around Jewish settlements if that would win support from the United States, its chief ally.

The US mission -- made up of senior National Security Council official Elliot Abrams, deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and State Department envoy William Burns --is also seen as crucial to a US decision on whether to back Sharon's unilateral plan to remove Gaza settlements.

Sharon received a boost for that proposal on Friday when a newspaper survey suggested he would overwhelmingly win a possible national referendum on a Gaza withdrawal.

Polls have shown a strong majority of Israelis favour a pullout from Gaza, where about 7500 settlers live in fortified enclaves surrounded by more than a million Palestinians.

Sharon, once considered the godfather of the settlement movement, said earlier this month he had given orders to plan for evacuation of 17 of the 21 enclaves Israel has built in Gaza since capturing the area in the 1967 Middle East war.

The proposal is part of a go-it-alone plan Sharon has vowed to impose on the Palestinians if peace efforts remain stalled. He has made it clear that would leave Palestinians with less land than they are seeking for a state.

Israel's Channel Two said a feasibility plan yet to be presented to Sharon showed that residents of Gaza settlements could be resettled in Israel's Negev region within months.

US officials have responded favourably to the idea of uprooting settlements but have stopped short of embracing Sharon's unilateral approach, for fear that it would bury an already battered US-backed "road map" to peace.

The sources said the high-level delegation would seek assurances from Sharon on the main principles of the road map, which calls for a Palestinian state by 2005.

The visit could smooth the way for Sharon's trip to Washington for talks with US President George W Bush late this month or in early March. "There are some thorny issues that have to be dealt with to guarantee that Sharon and Bush will be smiling when they get together," one diplomatic source said.

- REUTERS