MIDDLE EAST: Battling for his political life in the face of growing corruption allegations which have rocked his re- election campaign, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, last night dismissed the accusations against him as a "despicable libel" and said the opposition Labor Party would stop at nothing to bring him down.
In a dramatic move, the broadcast of Mr Sharon's press conference was cut short after the chairman of the Central Election Committee, Supreme Court Justice Mishael Cheshin, ruled that the Prime Minister had violated an Israeli law which forbids radio and TV stations from airing "election propaganda" in the 30 days before polling unless it is during a specifically allocated election slot.
"I came here tonight to respond to the despicable libel that has been made against me with one purpose, to bring down the government in Israel and to seize power through lies," Mr Sharon told the news conference.
He was referring to a report in the Haaretz daily on Tuesday which revealed that he and his sons were being investigated in connection with a $1.5 million loan they received from a British-born businessman in South Africa to help pay back illegal campaign funds which had been received when Mr Sharon won the leadership of the Likud party in 1999.
Trying to halt his party's slide in opinion polls, Mr Sharon lambasted Labor for trying to "blacken a whole movement . . . to turn all of us into the Mafia, into organised crime, all for the sake of politics". In recent days, Mr Sharon has been under growing public pressure to answer the allegations.
"Everything was done in a proper way. I have documents that prove everything," he told the press conference. However he did not provide specific details on some of the main allegations against him, telling reporters that financial matters had been handled by his sons.
In another election-related development yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that two Arab lawmakers, as well as a Jewish extremist, could run in the elections on January 28th. The court overturned a decision last week by a parliamentary elections committee banning Arab legislators Mr Ahmed Tibi and Mr Azmi Bishara from running, on the grounds they had backed armed resistance against Israel.
Mr Tibi praised the court for blocking what he called "the anti-democratic avalanche of the right-wing". The head of the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee, Mr Shawki Khatib, said that after the court's decision, he would "now call on the entire Arab public to give their answer at the ballot box . . . and to change the government".
The court ruled that Mr Baruch Marzel, a far-right activist, could run in the elections, but it barred a Likud member, Mr Moshe Feiglin, who was convicted of sedition after leading a civil disobedience campaign against the Oslo accords, from running.
The court also decided that the Defence Minister, Mr Shaul Mofaz, could not run on the Likud list because he had not completed the required "cooling-off" period before entering politics, after leaving his post as army chief last year.