Sharon cuts off talks with Barak over emergency government

Sharon said Wednesday he could not belong to a coalition that is pursuing a fast-track peace agenda with the Palestinians.

It was Sharon's visit to a Jerusalem shrine holy both to Muslims and Jews three weeks ago, seen as a provocative power play by Palestinians, that sparked the worst wave of violence in the region in decades.

Citing unrest that has led to the deaths of 100 people, nearly all of them Palestinian, Barak had asked Sharon and other opposition leaders to put aside their political differences and unify during the national crisis.

But following Tuesday's emergency summit, where the sides agreed to a cease-fire, Sharon said he was breaking off negotiations for a unity government. He said the Israeli concessions made there constituted a return to understandings reached at the Camp David peace summit this summer, which he strongly opposed.

"Whoever thinks we will go into a government which has embraced the Camp David path is simply mistaken," Sharon told Israel's army radio. "We need a different political program."

Sharon's Likud party advocates negotiating an interim agreement with the Palestinians, to be pursued over an extended period of time.

A final peace deal seemed to be in reach before the outbreak of the recent violent clashes. The talks at Camp David had come close to resolving certain key issues, but broke down over the future of Jerusalem.

Barak's governing coalition collapsed in July on the eve of Camp David, and the prime minister has few options for political survival short of an emergency government. The opposition senses that there may be early elections and has little interest in keeping Barak afloat.

In light of the violence, Israeli officials have gone public for the first time with plans to physically separate Israel from the Palestinian areas without a peace accord.

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said such a plan of unilateral action would only be implemented if peace efforts collapse completely.

"We would try to shape the reality here in the closest possible way to what we would like to achieve through agreement. Whatever could be done by ourselves in this direction, we will try to implement," Sneh told The Associated Press.

Sneh said the details of such a plan have not been fully worked out but that it would provide for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to remain under Israeli sovereignty

(AP)