The Palestinians warned on Tuesday that the United States will torpedo the peace process if it bows to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s pledge to keep control of West Bank settlement blocks.
Shortly before flying out to Washington overnight, Sharon vowed to maintain Israeli control over six such blocks, including Kiryat Arba and Ariel, which both lie deep within Palestinian territory.
Sharon sees US President George Bush’s endorsement of his ”disengagement plan” as a vital prerequisite for his attempts to win backing for the project from his right-wing Likud party and other members of his governing coalition.
The Israeli premier was expected to meet US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in Washington later on Tuesday before his summit with Bush at the White House on Wednesday.
While right-wing opponents have criticised his proposal to evacuate all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and another four in the West Bank, Sharon is hoping to deflect such opposition by winning US guarantees of continued control over other settlements and a renunciation of Palestinian refugees’ right to return to present-day Israel.
Sharon’s deputy, Ehud Olmert, said that the premier will also ask for US guarantees that Israel ”retains its freedom of action to fight against terrorism” after the pullout from Gaza.
”I am convinced that the prime minister will obtain in Washington the backing for his initiative,” Olmert told army radio.
However, Danny Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to the US, said that points of disagreement still remain, which will hopefully be resolved at the talks.
”There are subjects on political and security issues which remain to be resolved,” Ayalon told the radio.
Palestinian Negotiations Minister Saeb Erakat said Sharon’s declarations on the settlements are a ”recipe for destruction” of the peace process.
”We firmly condemn these very serious declarations by Sharon,” Erakat said.
”The maintenance of six settlement blocks in the West Bank is a recipe for closing all the doors in the peace process and its destruction.”
Sharon says he has no option but to implement unilateral measures in the absence of a Palestinian partner in the peace process, accusing Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei and veteran leader Yasser Arafat of failing to crack down on militants.
Meanwhile, the office of Israeli President Moshe Katsav said it has been informed by police in Hungary that the head of state has been the target of an assassination plot while on a visit to Budapest.
”The local police have told our delegation [travelling with Katsav] that the president was the target,” a spokesperson in Katsav’s office in Jerusalem said.
The police had informed the Israeli delegation that three people had been arrested, describing them as ”terrorists”, the spokesperson added.
The Hungarian radio station Inforadio, quoting intelligence sources, said three people of Arab origin had been arrested in connection with the plot.
Hungarian police had learned of a planned terror attack during Katzav’s visit, national police spokesperson Lajos Nemeth said, but he would not confirm or deny that the Israeli head of state was the target.
Israel’s Shin Beth domestic security service, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that it had foiled an attempt by Palestinian militants to carry out a suicide attack using a bomb laced with HIV-infected blood during the Passover holiday.
Extremists had been planning to dispatch a suicide bomber from the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya to Tel Aviv to carry out the attack during the week-long Jewish holiday that ended on Monday, a Shin Beth spokesperson said.
Security sources also said 10 people had been arrested after Israeli security forces smashed a cell that smuggled weapons to the Palestinian territories across the Israeli-Egyptian border.
The five Egyptians, four Israeli bedouins and one Palestinian were detained after 140 rifles, as well rocket-propelled grenades and a large cache of ammunition, were seized in a joint police, army and intelligence operation. — Sapa-AFP