WASHINGTON, May 7: US President George W. Bush agrees on the need for profound Palestinian Authority reforms but opposes Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s push to sideline Yasser Arafat, the White House said on Tuesday.

Bush, set to showcase “unflagging support” for Israel during a meeting here with Sharon, will nonetheless urge action to ease “the plight of the Palestinian people” and will renew support for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.

“That state has to be based on transparency, democracy, a market economy, good government (and) lack of corruption — which is a serious worry for the president right now vis-a-vis the Palestinian Authority,” said Fleischer.

“Otherwise, it could become a force for instability, not stability, in a region that needs stability,” the spokesman said before the two leaders’ fifth meeting since Bush took office in January last year.

Fleischer reiterated that the president cannot throw his support behind Sharon’s determined drive to marginalize Arafat, even though the US leader has never met him and has repeatedly said he mistrusts him.

“The president understands that Yasser Arafat is seen by the Palestinian people as their leader,” said the spokesman, who warned that Bush thinks “Arafat has not only let him down, but he’s let down the Palestinian people”.

Sharon’s meeting with Bush came a day after the Israeli leader and Jordan’s King Abdullah met US Secretary of State Colin Powell, and a day before Abdullah was to meet the US president.

Sharon came to Washington touting his version of a peace plan, which pointedly excludes Arafat from its incremental steps toward a settlement.

Along with the plan, Sharon is carrying a 100-page intelligence report that Israel alleges contains proof that Arafat and the Palestinian Authority financed and oversaw a wave of suicide attacks inside Israel.

Fleischer said that military operation had proved counterproductive to efforts to reform the Palestinian leadership and bolstered rather than weakened Arafat’s standing among his people and in the Arab world.

“Now, Yasser Arafat is indeed very popular with the Palestinian people. But prior to the violence, there was a tremendous amount of frustration on behalf of the Palestinian people with the Palestinian leadership,” he said.

“Ideally, ... as the violence fades and people start to focus more on reconstruction, rebuilding the daily lives of the Palestinian people, how to create a viable economy, the very definition of the Palestinian infrastructure becomes a key issue,” said Fleischer.

US officials, including Powell and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who also met Sharon, have refused to comment on the plan or the Arafat report, saying they had not yet seen the documents.

But Bush, speaking in Michigan, said he shared Israel’s “high level of disappointment” in the Palestinian leader.

Sharon’s peace plan calls for a complete restructuring of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority with a regional conference to speed negotiations.

Addressing a conference of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a leading Jewish group, Sharon said the Authority should unify its forces and restructure government institutions to achieve full transparency and accountability.

And in another jab at Arafat, the prime minister said the authority must be less centralized.

“A responsible Palestinian Authority that can advance the cause of peace should not be dependent on the will of one man,” Sharon said.

Powell, who also met Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Monday, delivered an impassioned plea for religious and ethnic tolerance, especially in the Middle East.

“The only way to break the cycle of violence is to convince the parties to conflict that investing in peace and cooperating with their neighbours pays greater rewards than unending strife,” Powell told the ADL.

Powell also looked to build support for an international conference proposed on Thursday by the “quartet” — the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — telling the ADL it would seek to “promote serious and accelerated” Israeli-Palestinian peace talks but also include security discussions and humanitarian aid for the Palestinians.

With the exception of Arafat, though, the Arab world has been cool to the idea.—AFP