JERUSALEM, Sept 4: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday shelved his controversial plan to withdraw from large swathes of the occupied West Bank and said he wanted dialogue with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.

The embattled premier, under fire over the war in Lebanon and facing possible corruption probes, said the so-called realignment plan — the main platform under which his Kadima party narrowly won parliamentary elections in March — was no longer a priority.

“At this moment the question of realignment is not on our priority list the way it was two months ago,” Mr Olmert was quoted as telling the parliamentary defence and foreign affairs committee by a Knesset official.

“I have no doubt that something has changed in the priorities I thought we had, and Israel’s priorities have changed also when dealing with the Palestinian problem.”

Mr Olmert’s centrist Kadima party won a narrow election victory on March 28 in a de facto referendum on his ambitions to withdraw from most of the West Bank but effectively to annex the largest Jewish settlements to Israel.

Tens of thousands of Jewish settlers would have been uprooted in the project that was seen as a direct successor to last year’s pullout from the Gaza Strip conducted by former prime minister Ariel Sharon, after a 38-year occupation.

Palestinians had slammed the plan because it would have put large parts of their promised future state under Israeli control, and because they say only negotiations — not unilateral steps — can resolve the Middle East conflict.—AFP