Sharon Details Unilateral Plan to U.S.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sought Thursday to reassure three American envoys that Israel did not want to abandon the U.S.-backed peace blueprint known as the “road map,” but made it clear that he was readying steps of his own should that effort fail.

Sharon held a three-hour meeting with the high-level U.S. delegation to present details of his “disengagement plan,” a set of proposed unilateral Israeli measures that had been unveiled piecemeal over the last several months but had not yet been publicly spelled out in detail.

Those proposals include the uprooting of nearly all the 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip but may also involve the annexation by Israel of large settlement blocs in the West Bank -- something the Palestinians say would be unacceptable.

While Sharon was closeted with the envoys, U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer expressed hopes that the Israeli leader would try to implement the peace plan rather than rely on unilateral steps. But he said Israel lacked a credible negotiating partner on the Palestinian side, making it difficult to move forward.

Speaking to the leaders of American Jewish organizations meeting in Jerusalem, Kurtzer said the Palestinians had failed in commitments to dismantle the infrastructure of militant groups -- an accusation frequently leveled by Sharon’s government.

However, a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity said the ambassador’s comments should not be construed as tacit approval for Sharon to proceed with unilateral steps.

The prime minister’s office said in a statement that in the meeting with the American envoys, the Israeli leader had “emphasized that the road map is the only political plan acceptable to Israel.” The statement also said, however, that “ideas were exchanged for the continued advancement of the disengagement plan.”

Palestinians have interpreted Sharon’s stated position as a thinly veiled threat to seize large chunks of territory, in effect drawing the borders of their future state by annexing West Bank land.

Palestinian negotiator and Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat also met with the U.S. delegation. He said afterward he had told the envoys that any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be negotiated, rather than imposed on the Palestinians.

“We believe peace can be achieved in bilateral negotiations, not unilateral steps,” Erekat said after meeting in East Jerusalem with the envoys: Stephen Hadley, deputy national security advisor; Elliott Abrams, the National Security Council’s director of Middle East affairs; and Assistant Secretary of State William J. Burns.

The delegation is the highest-ranking to visit the region in eight months, reflecting the U.S. desire to stave off the outright death of the peace plan. The Bush administration has staked considerable prestige on the plan since its launch last spring at a summit with Sharon and then-Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

But both Israeli and Palestinian officials have said privately that they expect the level of American engagement to diminish as the U.S. elections draw closer, making it more difficult to implement a plan that the two sides have thus far largely ignored.

According to Israeli media reports, Sharon did not present maps, a timetable or any precise details about contemplated Israeli pullbacks in Gaza, or Israel’s desired arrangements for retaining settlement blocs in the West Bank.

This round of talks came before the International Court of Justice in The Hague is to open hearings Monday on the legality of the barrier Israel is building to separate itself from most of the West Bank.

Israel does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction in the case and will not argue its position, but the government has filed a lengthy deposition defending its right to construct fortifications around the West Bank, the source of more than 100 suicide attacks against Israel over the last three years.

Israel has said it intends to alter the barrier’s intended path to make it less intrusive, but has not said when, where or how. Sources on both sides in Thursday’s U.S.-Israeli meeting said no further details of those plans were disclosed in the talks.

Sharon has been dropping broad hints for more than a month that he wants to be invited to the White House for talks with President Bush. But officials on both sides said more groundwork was needed.

In a reminder of the conflict’s looming daily presence, an Israeli court on Thursday sentenced two Palestinian militants who had dispatched a female suicide bomber to blow herself up at a seaside restaurant in the port city of Haifa in October, killing 23 other people and injuring scores more. They received multiple life sentences -- 21 for one defendant, 23 for the other -- plus an additional 50 years.

The ruling noted that they had expressed no remorse.