- JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon says he has no intention of sticking to the US-backed "road
map" peace plan that Israel endorsed last year.
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- He also said there might be no further troop pullbacks
after Israel carried out its so-called unilateral "disengagement"
from the Palestinians ñ a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four
small West Bank settlements next year.
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- "It is very possible that after the evacuation (disengagement),
there will be a long period when nothing else happens," Mr Sharon
told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, commenting for the first time in detail
on Israel's plans after a Gaza withdrawal. Asked whether he was talking
about decades of standstill, he said: "It's impossible to say".
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- However, Mr Sharon said that as long as there was no
significant shift in the Palestinian leadership and policy, "Israel
will continue its war on terrorism and will stay in the (West Bank) territories
that will remain after the implementation of disengagement".
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- The road map, announced last year, envisioned a Palestinian
state by next year.
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- The plan did not spell out the borders of that state,
but US officials had said Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
must come to an end. US President George W. Bush has since said it would
be "unrealistic" to expect Israel to remove large Israeli population
centres in the West Bank ñ a statement seen by Mr Sharon as backing
for his plan to keep large West Bank settlement blocs in any future deal
with the Palestinians. Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said Mr
Sharon's comments confirmed Palestinian concerns that the disengagement
plan was a ploy to cement Israel's control over large areas of the West
Bank.
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- US and European Union officials have assured the Palestinians
they only back the disengagement plan as part of the road map.
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- "I think that those who saw the Gaza disengagement
as an opportunity because they counted that it would be part of the road
map should really understand that their good intentions are one thing and
that Sharon's good intentions are another," Mr Erekat said.
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- "Sharon's intention is to destroy the road map and
to dictate his long-term solution of Gaza as a prison and 40 per cent of
the West Bank within walls, and this will not fly."
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