Sharon denies plans for settlements evacuation

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denied yesterday he was planning to evacuate seven Jewish settlements under a separation plan he has threatened to implement if peacemaking with Palestinians fails.

Settler leaders said earlier that a senior official from Mr Sharon's office offered them a deal under which they would agree not to oppose the evacuation in return for a law banning removal of additional settlements until a peace deal accord was achieved.

"I want to emphasise that all the reports of purported negotiations with the YESHA (settlement) council on the issue of the disengagement plan are incorrect," Mr Sharon told reporters.

"I have no intention to legislate such a law or any other that would tie the government's hands," he said, reinforcing a denial issued hours earlier by a spokesman.

The controversy flared amid a fresh, low-key round of US-led peace diplomacy and reports that Mr Sharon will soon head to Washington to present his disengagement plan to US President George W. Bush.

Mr Sharon has said that if a stalled US-backed "road map" collapses, Israel will uproot some of its most isolated settlements and draw a "security line" around others, absorbing chunks of territory Palestinians want for a state.

But he has avoided giving details on which settlements might go, as Israel presses ahead with construction of a West Bank barrier which it says has already stopped suicide bombers from reaching its cities. Palestinians call the project a land grab.

Preparations, meanwhile, moved into high gear for Israel's planned release tomorrow of 436 prisoners, most of them Palestinians, in a German-mediated swap with the Lebanese guerilla group Hizbollah.

They will be released in return for an Israeli businessman held by Hizbollah and three Israeli troops presumed dead after they were abducted while on border patrol in 2000.

Suggestions that Israel would dismantle any settlements built on occupied land have triggered settlers' accusations of betrayal by Sharon.

"They have tried to persuade us to agree to the removal of settlements," said Yesha spokesman Yehoshua Mor Yosef after a meeting with Sharon's representatives. "Sharon wants to go to Washington with a closed plan. We rejected it outright."

Settler leaders said that those listed for removal were in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, occupied since the 1967 Middle East war. Most of the international community regards Israel's 150 settlements as illegal. Israel disputes this.

Palestinians welcome the removal of settlements but are opposed to Sharon's threatened unilateral measures, saying such moves would leave them with a shrunken, chopped-up state.