Sharon endorses peace plan

ISRAELI Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday offered his strongest endorsement of a US-sponsored framework for peace.

The process ends with the creation of a Palestinian state and he promised to push for its approval if re-elected.

However, the hardline leader rejected a key element of the plan: a detailed timetable.

In a speech to a national security conference, Sharon also reiterated his insistence shared by Washington that Yasser Arafat has to be removed as the Palestinian leader and that violence against Israeli targets has to end before progress can be made.

"Israel can no longer be expected to make political concessions until there is proven calm and Palestinian governmental reforms," Sharon said.

Fears of new violence rose yesterday after Sharon said several members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network have infiltrated the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and are working with the Hezbollah guerrilla group.

"We know they are in the region," he said in Tel Aviv. "There's no doubt that Israel is a target for an attack."

Police went on high alert for several hours in Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv area setting up makeshift checkpoints to check cars because of "terrorist warnings," said police spokesman Gil Kleiman.

Sharon welcomed recent statements by senior Palestinian officials that taking up arms against Israel had been a mistake and must stop immediately.

"We see today cracks in Palestinian society," he said. "There are people who understand that Arafat brought upon them a terrible catastrophe.

"Will it develop in a certain direction? I hope so."

Sharon said that if re-elected next month as expected he would try to form a broad-based government that would approve a vision outlined in June by President George Bush.

Bush said then that a Palestinian state could be created alongside Israel within three years. Sharon called Bush's framework "reasonable, pragmatic and practicable" and said he had accepted it in principle. However, he has expressed serious reservations about a more detailed "road map" to Palestinian statehood developed by the so-called Quartet of mediators: the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union.

That three-phase plan envisages a provisional state by 2003 and a permanent one by 2005.

It also makes specific demands of Israel, including a complete freeze of Jewish settlement construction.

Arafat has said he accepted the plan in principle, but Israel says each stage should be more strongly linked to developments. Sharon reiterated his reservations, saying he rejected the idea of a "predetermined timetable," insisting movement from one phase to the next would be determined "on the basis of performance."