A top-level team of US envoys had a second round of talks with Israeli officials yesterday, after pressing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for more details on his proposed unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
The diplomats met Sharon for more than three hours on Thursday. US and Palestinian officials have expressed concern that Sharon's ideas for unilateral steps if peace talks remain stalled might be the final nail in the coffin of the moribund US-backed "road map" peace plan.
US President George W. Bush launched the "road map" plan in June, but neither side has carried out even its first provisions. The plan begins with a halt to more than three years of violence and ends with creation a Palestinian state.
In the first phase, Palestinians are to dismantle violent groups responsible for thousands of attacks against Israelis and Israel is to take down dozens of unauthorized West Bank settlement outposts and halt construction in veteran settlements, but the steps have not been taken.
Sharon has been talking of unilateral action to reduce Israeli-Palestinian friction and improve security, but Palestinians charge that the measures are meant to pen them in.
According to the as yet unfinished plan, Israel would withdraw from most or all of the Gaza Strip, evacuating Jewish settlements, while imposing a boundary on the West Bank.
The boundary would probably follow the route of the contentious barrier Israel is building, dipping deep into the West Bank in several places. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep Palestinian bombers and other attackers out, but the Palestinians call it a land grab aimed at preventing them from creating a state.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said he would welcome a Gaza withdrawal, but insisted it would have to be accompanied by a simultaneous pullback from the West Bank.
Also, the withdrawal "should be through talks between the two parties and the framework of the road map," he told Palestinian legislators on Thursday.
Critics of Sharon's plan say it runs counter to the road map, which calls for negotiations to settle issues like borders, but Israel maintains that Palestinians are not ready for serious peace talks.
The US team, making a second visit to Israel in less than a month, includes Assistant Secretary of State William Burns; Stephen Hadley, deputy director of the National Security Council; and Elliot Abrams, a Middle East specialist at the council.
In Washington, senior US State Department official David Satterfield said the envoys were insisting that Sharon's steps must be taken in the framework of the road map and contribute to creation of a Palestinian state.
Sharon's proposals "should move us toward that goal, not complicate it," Satterfield said.
As talks began, an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel is considering leaving up to 24 West Bank settlements under its unilateral disengagement plan, many more than mentioned before.
Sharon has not yet decided on the scope or timing of a withdrawal, the official said. In the event of a broad withdrawal, Israel would seek US assurances that Israel would not have to dismantle large settlement blocs, the official said. About 230,000 Israelis live in some 150 West Bank settlements.
The focus in talks on Thursday was the proposed Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Some warn of chaos, and armed Palestinian groups are already jockeying for position, sometimes violently.
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