Sharon dismisses Bush's warning on settlement expansion
Appeals to Abbas to curb militants
WASHINGTON -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel brushed off a warning from President Bush about further West Bank settlement growth, indicating that Israel would continue to solidify its hold on areas it considers of strategic importance.
In a meeting yesterday with US newspaper editors, Sharon also reiterated his call for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to take stronger steps to curb militants.
''I have known him for many years. There is no doubt he represents a departure from Yasser Arafat's strategy of terror," Sharon said, according to a senior Israeli official. ''But he must take additional steps to disarm terror organizations, stop incitement, or we can't move forward from the pre-road map stage."
Abbas, expected to meet Bush next month, has preferred a strategy of negotiations with militant groups, rather than confrontation.
The Israeli official, who was traveling with Sharon and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister also discussed developments in Iran and Lebanon and prospects for democracy in the Middle East with editors at the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting.
Sharon met later with Vice President Dick Cheney, discussing US-Israeli issues and the Iranian nuclear threat, an official said.
Sharon also discussed the Iranian threat with President Bush on Monday when the two leaders met at Bush's ranch in Texas. Israeli officials said Sharon's military secretary, Yoav Galant, presented Bush with Israeli intelligence on Iran's nuclear program, including satellite pictures.
Sharon believes the European effort to curb the Iran's nuclear ambitions has been ineffective.
Israeli intelligence officials do not think Iran has yet produced a nuclear weapon. But Sharon told Bush that Israeli intelligence showed Iran was near ''a point of no return" in learning to develop one, The New York Times reported today, quoting senior American and Israeli officials. Sharon gave no indication that Israel was planning to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, those officials said.
On Monday, Sharon called his meeting with Bush a great success. At a joint news conference at Bush's ranch, the Israeli leader won renewed support for his plan to remove Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, but he dampened Bush's expectations that the tempo of peace talks would pick up after the withdrawal.
At the ranch, Bush told Sharon that any further building on the settlements would be in violation of the internationally backed ''road map" peace plan, which both the Israelis and the Palestinians have formally accepted, but which has long been dormant.
In Maaleh Adumim, bulldozers cleared rubble and cranes hoisted equipment yesterday to build houses in the largest West Bank settlement. Israel says the work is within existing boundaries and does not constitute expansion. 