12 April 2004	Monday	21 Safar 1425

AL QUDS, April 11: Israeli political sources said on Sunday Washington will give Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a written pledge promising that in exchange for a planned pullout from Gaza , Israel will not have to give up the entire West Bank in any future peace deal with Palestinians.

There was no immediate US comment. US sources in Washington said last week "understandings" had been reached with Israel on key aspects of Sharon's plan for a unilateral pullout from Gaza after officials close to him said he expected approval to retain parts of the West Bank.

"I hope this visit will be successful and allow Israel to make gains on all fronts," Sharon told reporters on Sunday. "We will be free of needless pressures." The Israeli sources said Washington's assurance would come in a letter that President George W. Bush will hand Sharon on Wednesday at White House talks expected to give the US green light for Israel to unilaterally 'disengage' from Palestinians.

The Israeli daily Haaretz, quoting from what it said was the planned letter from Bush, said borders to be established under any final peace accord would reflect "demographic realities", an allusion to large Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank.

A source in Sharon's office said only that the issue would be on the Washington agenda. "Whether settlement blocs will be mentioned (in the letter) will come up in the meeting between the president and the prime minister," he said.

Political analysts say the more benefits the United States offers Sharon in the Washington meetings, the easier it will be for him to overcome rightist resistance at home for his plan to withdraw from Gaza and four of some 120 West Bank settlements.

The Palestinians want all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, for the state they hope to establish under a US-backed peace "road map". But sources in Sharon's office said Bush would make clear he does not expect Israel to quit all the West Bank under any deal. "I do not know the exact wording. But it will definitely contain an insistence that Israel will not return to the 1967 border," said a source, referring to the expected Bush letter.

Palestinians cried foul at the disclosure, seeing the removal of the small, isolated settlements in Gaza as a ruse to cement Israel's hold on the West Bank settlement clusters.

"This is the worst American political position since 1967. We will reject it," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's ruling executive committee. "It replaces the road map with the Sharon plan."

The source in Sharon's office said that in his own letter to Bush the prime minister will reiterate Israel's commitment to the road map plan and the president's vision of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinians have said Sharon's unilateral steps contradict the road map's vision of reciprocal moves towards peace leading to the creation of a viable Palestinian state by 2005.

The Israeli source said the Bush letter would also challenge the demand by Palestinians displaced in the 1948 war of Israel's creation to return to lands now in the Jewish state, saying refugees could be resettled in a future Palestinian state.

Sharon plans to submit his "disengagement plan" this month to a binding vote by the 200,000 members of his right-wing Likud party, which like Sharon has long supported settlement building.

Resistance is especially stiff from some 7,500 Gaza settlers slated for evacuation. Several hundred of them demonstrated outside Sharon's Negev desert ranch on Sunday under the banner "Sharon is Selling Out (Gaza settlements) to the Americans".

Sharon pitches the plan as a stopgap move to stop deadly attacks of Palestinian militants. But Likud nationalists oppose any withdrawal and the vote is likely to be close. -Reuters