Sharon asks Britain to press Abbas over militants

Israeli leader Ariel Sharon urged Britain to press Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to act now to dismantle militant groups to bolster a Middle East peace plan, an Israeli diplomatic source said yesterday.

The appeal followed talks on Monday in which Sharon failed to persuade Prime Minister Tony Blair to cut Britain's ties with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom Israel accuses of encouraging violence. Arafat denies the charge.

"Every contact with Yasser Arafat is undermining the peace process," the source said, adding that Sharon also wanted British "pressure on (Abbas) to act against terrorist organisations - to dismantle them".

Abbas, a moderate whom Israel wants to help bring nearly three years of Israeli-Palestinian violence to an end, has avoided confrontation with militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, fearing a civil war.

The United States, which sponsored the peace plan known as the "road map" with the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, has been vocal in its demands for Abbas to disarm the militants as the road map mandates.

A Downing Street spokesman called Sharon's talks with Blair "warm and constructive" and said both leaders restated a commitment to the peace plan.

There was no immediate word whether Blair had pressed Sharon to step up the pace of confidence-building measures mandated by the plan, such as the dismantling of settler-outposts in the West Bank erected without Israeli government permission.

"We made it very clear that if (the Palestinians) do not take steps (against militants), they won't get anything," the Israeli source said.

Palestinians argue that it is Sharon who is holding up peacemaking by rejecting their calls for the release of all 6,000 Palestinians held by Israel.

Israel has said some 300 would go free and they would not include prisoners with "blood on their hands" or members of militant groups behind attacks in which hundreds of Israelis have been killed.

However, Israeli officials have signalled the tough terms might be eased after a meeting between Sharon and Abbas next week to discuss ways to bolster the peace plan that charts reciprocal steps leading to a Palestinian state by 2005.

In Tel Aviv yesterday, a Palestinian stabbed to death one Israeli and wounded another on a seaside promenade in an attack claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to Arafat's Fatah faction.

It was the first attack by a Palestinian in an Israeli city since militants, under pressure from Abbas and under fire from Israel, declared a three-month truce on June 29.