Embattled PM Sharon wins a small victory

MIDDLE EAST: Apparently unfazed by angry boos from parts of the audience, and by the looming possibility that he may indicted…

MIDDLE EAST: Apparently unfazed by angry boos from parts of the audience, and by the looming possibility that he may indicted for taking bribes, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, appeared to have secured a small political victory last night en route to his stated plan for an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem

In a somewhat chaotic procedure at a convention of his governing Likud party in Tel Aviv, delegates approved Mr Sharon's proposal that all members of the party - some 190,000 - will vote in a binding referendum on his disengagement plan within the next few weeks.

Addressing the convention, in a generally bland speech, Mr Sharon stressed the need for the party to unify behind the referendum result and predicted that, if it did, the Likud would lead Israel for many years to come.

The Prime Minister's decision to put the disengagement plan to his entire party membership, rather than seek majority support only from Likud members of Knesset or the 3,000-strong party Central Committee is smart politics.

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Many Likud deputies, including the Foreign Minister, Mr Silvan Shalom, are adamantly and publicly opposed to the plan, regarding it as a capitulation to Palestinian terrorism. A strong majority of the Central Committee, similarly, is believed to oppose the idea.

However, the wider Likud membership is generally regarded as more moderate. Indeed, Mr Sharon is believed to have commissioned surveys within party ranks in recent days, before deciding on yesterday's strategy.

Assuming that he is not charged with taking bribes in the next few days, the Prime Minister is set to fly to Washington on April 14th, where he hopes to secure President Bush's backing for a speedy Israeli departure from the Gaza Strip, where some 7,500 Jews live among 1.3 million Palestinians.

Three weeks after that, Likud would hold its referendum.

If the plan is approved and implementation begins, two small rightist factions will bolt Mr Sharon's coalition, but senior members of the opposition Labour Party are already indicating that they would fill the void and keep Mr Sharon in power so long as he was relinquishing territory in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Israeli attorney general, urged this week by his most senior state prosecutor to press charges against Mr Sharon, is expected to make his decision within the next month or two.

A Bush administration team is due to arrive in Jerusalem today for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders over the plan.