ISRAEL: Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon flew to Britain yesterday, where he planned to lobby for Mr Yasser Arafat's deeper isolation amid Israeli threats to deport the Palestinian president if he impedes a Middle East peace plan.
"Israel remains very clear and adamant on the need to put pressure on Arafat and to remove him from a position of power," a senior Israeli official said ahead of the three-day visit and talks on Monday with British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair.
"Every phone call to Arafat . . . every dignitary that visits from the European Union, from Britain, only strengthens Arafat in his effort to scuttle and undermine [Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's\] position," the official said.
"That will be one of the points" Mr Sharon plans to raise with Mr Blair, the official said.
Mr Arafat, responding to Mr Sharon's intentions, said he had withstood similar attempts by Israel to isolate him in the past and would withstand this one as well. "We are a mighty people," he told reporters.
Meanwhile, Mr Sharon told the Norwegian daily Aftenposten yesterday that Europe should cut ties with Arafat to promote peace. The official said Mr Sharon will hold out the prospect of a wider European Union role in "security and political negotiations" in the framework of the peace "road map" it sponsored with the United States, Russia and the United Nations.
But first, the official added, Mr Sharon wanted the EU to follow "a more balanced policy towards Israel".
An Israeli diplomatic source said on Saturday that Israel conveyed to Washington, which is shepherding the revived peace process, that if Mr Arafat continued to undermine Mr Abbas it would "reconsider his location and status".
With US backing, Israel has isolated Mr Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, accusing him of fomenting violence in a nearly three-year-old Palestinian uprising for independence.
Mr Arafat denies the allegations.
Mr Sharon's three-day visit to Britain follows a series of diplomatic spats with London on Middle East peacemaking which have since been overtaken by Israel's acceptance, with 14 reservations, of the road map. - (Reuters)