Sharon Insists He Won’t Quit Post

A defiant Ariel Sharon brushed off calls to resign Thursday, vowing to complete his term in office despite a burgeoning bribery scandal. But even a top official from his own party said Sharon’s days as Israel’s prime minister might be numbered.

Speaking after a real estate developer was indicted Wednesday on charges of trying to bribe Sharon with $690,000, the prime minister told a youth gathering from the ruling Likud Party that he intended to stay. His intention already had been reported in local media.

“I arrived here as prime minister and as chairman of the Likud, a position I plan to fill for many more years, until 2007 at least,” Sharon told the cheering youths, referring to the date of the next scheduled election.

Sharon has battled back from political adversity before. In 1983, he was forced to resign as defense minister when a government inquiry found him indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians in Beirut area refugee camps at the hands of Israel’s Lebanese Christian militia allies.

Justice Ministry officials said they would decide within months whether to charge Sharon with accepting bribes. Such charges would be filed only if prosecutors were convinced that he had criminal intent in taking money.

If he is indicted, legal precedent suggests that Sharon would have to suspend himself from his post until the end of proceedings.

“If the prime minister is indicted, there is no doubt he will have to resign,” Education Minister Limor Livnat told Israel Radio.

But pressure is mounting on Sharon to step down now.

A Dahaf poll published Thursday in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper found that 49% of respondents believe Sharon should resign or suspend himself now; 38% said he should remain prime minister. The poll of 504 people had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

The focus of the scandal is the so-called Greek island affair, in which businessman David Appel allegedly paid Sharon’s son Gilad so that Sharon, then Israel’s foreign minister, would use his influence to help Appel promote a tourism project in Greece in the late 1990s.