Sharon sets new US talks after Gaza plan rejected

1.00pm - By MARK HEINRICH

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will have talks in Washington next week about how to save his US-backed plan to withdraw from Gaza blocked by rightists in his own Likud party, aides said on Wednesday.

Israeli forces, meanwhile, shot dead a top Hamas man in the West Bank and released a co-founder of the militant group in Gaza, where troops also raided three Palestinian towns, killing a security man and wounding 15 people.

The raids were launched in response to Sunday's killing of five Jewish settlers in the territory, an ambush that influenced a Likud referendum vote against Sharon's plan.

Sharon on Tuesday began to brainstorm with allies how to refloat his scheme for "disengagement" from conflict with Palestinians.

US President George W Bush joined foreign mediators in urging him to stick to his plan, telling an Arabic television station it heralded a "historic moment for the world... Now is the time to make progress and I believe we can."

"The prime minister of Israel took a political risk, obviously he did, I mean his own party condemned it but that doesn't mean that it condemned the policy," Bush told Alhurra television, for broadcast to Arab countries.

The main purpose of Sharon's US trip was a speech to a convention of the influential pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC. Aides said he would also consult US officials -- and probably Bush -- about his troubled plan.

"The prime minister wants to jump-start the process. This is a plan that didn't receive (rank-and-file Likud) approval. Now we have to seek it through other means," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Radio.

Political sources said Sharon intended to keep "disengagement" on track with as few changes as possible despite Israeli media reports he might shut only a few Gaza settlements as an interim step to defuse resistance within Likud.

In the swirl of controversy over the pullout plan, Israel's secret service has tightened security for Sharon because of fears he is under threat from far right-wingers, Army Radio reported.

Palestinians meanwhile boosted protection for President Yasser Arafat against a possible Israeli threat, blocking the helicopter landing pad at his headquarters in Ramallah with cement-filled barrels, to prevent an aircraft from landing there.

Sharon's original plan envisaged scrapping all 21 Gaza enclaves, with 7500 Jews amidst 1.2 million Palestinians, and four of 120 in the West Bank while retaining and later annexing several larger settlement blocs there.

Tensions resurged on Israel's northern border as Israeli warplanes bombed Hizbollah targets in southern Lebanon after the Lebanese guerrilla group fired shells across the frontier, causing a fire but no injuries, Israeli security sources said.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops shot dead a leading Hamas militant, Imad Mohammed Janajra, 31, after ambushing him in an olive grove.

A co-founder of Hamas, Mohammed Taha, 68, was freed in Gaza after 14 months in jail for illegal possession of weapons.

Israeli troops killed a Palestinian police captain and wounded 15 people in clashes with gunmen and stone-throwers in Gaza and razed 10 houses in Khan Younis after a shooting ambush Sunday that killed a pregnant settler and her four daughters.

Israel plans to put up a seven-kilometre fence at the attack site near the Kissufim junction in Gaza to prevent further ambushes, the Haaretz newspaper website reported.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie praised a declaration made on Tuesday by the US-led quartet of Middle East mediators that the prospect of an end to 37 years of occupation in Gaza presented "a rare moment of opportunity" to make peace.

- REUTERS