Sharon to hold first talks with Palestinian PM

Israel and the Palestinians held their highest-level summit in two years yesterday, divided over a new US-backed international "road map" to peace.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's first talks with his recently elected, reformist counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, could provide an early sign of whether the three-phase peace plan based on reciprocal moves has any real chance of success.

The key question is who will take the first step under the proposal that Washington hails as a new opportunity for peace in the Middle East following the war in Iraq. The plan envisages an independent Palestinian state by 2005 and security for Israel.

Israel has balked at implementing the road map as is and wants Abbas to crack down on Palestinian militants spearheading a 31-month-old revolt. Palestinian officials say Israel must first accept the plan and relax its military grip in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Palestinians want for a state.

"The road map will fail if the Israeli side does not agree to implement the demands from the Palestinian side," Culture Minister Ziad Abu Amr told reporters in Gaza City yesterday.

Comments by Sharon in a newspaper interview published on Friday hinted at a possible compromise to kick-start the plan: an Israeli troop pullback and truce in northern Gaza, where a Palestinian security chief would move against gunmen.

"If (the Palestinians) cannot control all the areas, then they should take a specific area and carry out steps that need to be carried out," Sharon told the Jerusalem Post.

Palestinian Security Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan, who has tangled with Islamic fundamentalists before as a Gaza security chief, is a member of Abbas's negotiating team.

Israeli officials have said northern Gaza, where Israeli forces seized a town on Thursday after cross-border rocket attacks by militants, could be a proving ground for the Palestinians, leading to wider pullbacks under the road map.

In a sign of internal Palestinian divisions, Saeb Erekat, a long-time ally of President Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians' top negotiator, resigned from Abbas's cabinet after being excluded from the delegation to the talks, officials said.

"The prime minister accepted his resignation," Culture Minister Abu Amr said.

Israel wants Arafat isolated, accusing him of inciting violence and suicide bombings throughout the Palestinian uprising. The 74-year-old ex-guerilla leader denies the charge.

Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, will be meeting Sharon for the first time since becoming prime minister on April 30. The talks were due to begin at 8.30 p.m. at Sharon's Jerusalem home.

The sides last held high-level talks in September 2001. Then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met Arafat, whom Israel now shuns.

Any meeting of minds could smooth Sharon's talks with US President George W. Bush in Washington on Tuesday on the road map, which Israel's right-wing government has not yet accepted.

Washington has urged both sides to get on with the plan, which calls for ending violence, freezing Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and Gaza and a Palestinian state.