Sharon sets Israeli terms before Abbas visits U.S
Reuters
Date: 05-23-05
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Monday coupled a long-standing vow to hold on to three West Bank settlement blocs forever with a signal that other parts of the occupied area could be traded for peace.
But setting Israel's bar for Mahmoud Abbas before the Palestinian leader's White House talks with President George W. Bush on Thursday, Sharon said there could be no talks on a final peace deal until anti-Israeli militants were disarmed.
Addressing U.S. Jewish fund-raisers during a visit to New York, Sharon also reissued a call for the international community to bring the issue of Iran's nuclear program back to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
"I would say that, for instance, we will take Maale Adumim and we will take Gush Etzion and we will take Ariel ... they are going to stay in the hands of Israel forever and ever," he said, naming Jewish population centres in the occupied West Bank.
"As about other places, all that, I think will be the final phase of the permanent agreement negotiation and talks," he said, hinting about a willingness to discuss land-for-peace under a U.S.-backed "road map."
But Sharon, on the second day of a three-day private visit to the United States, said Israel had no plans for any imminent territorial moves after its pullout from the Gaza Strip and a corner of the West Bank in mid-August.
"We are going to leave Gaza completely," he said, repeating an offer to quit the narrow Philadelphi corridor between the Gaza Strip and Egypt if Cairo took over responsibility for stopping cross-border arms smuggling by Palestinian militants.
SHARON DEMANDS END TO VIOLENCE BEFORE PEACE TALKS
"If it will be quiet. It should be completely quiet -- end of terror, dismantling of terrorist organisations, collecting their weapons, stopping the smuggling ... that will enable us to start to enter the road map," Sharon said.
The peace plan charts mutual steps, including a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion that Sharon has ignored, leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.
Abbas, who along with Sharon declared a cease-fire in February after more than four years of violence, "doesn't believe in a policy of terror and murder," the prime minister said.
But, Sharon added, Israel needed to see deeds, not words from the Palestinian leader, who wants to co-opt rather than confront militants in a bid to avoid civil strife.
In a unilateral move, Israel intends to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four of 120 in the West Bank starting around August 16 or 17.
While welcoming the withdrawal from occupied land, Palestinians fear the pullout is an Israeli ruse to hold on to large tracts of the West Bank and deny them a viable state.
Commenting on Iran's nuclear program, Sharon said Tehran was making "every effort to possess a nuclear weapon," an allegation it denies.
He said Israel, while in "great danger" from an Iranian nuclear threat, should not spearhead efforts to stop the building of an Islamic bomb.
"It should be an international organisation led by the United States in order to take steps and I would say make other preparations to bring (the issue) back to the Security Council," Sharon said.
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