MIDDLE EAST: Opposition politicians are demanding that Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, resign from office, amid snowballing allegations of bribery and other financial wrongdoing.
Mr Yossi Sarid, of the left-wing Meretz party, accused Mr Sharon and his two sons of operating "like a Mafia family".
Labour's former finance minister, Mr Avraham Shochat, said he should not stay in office for another moment, as critics charged that new evidence in the complex scandal showed the Prime Minister to have lied to the judge who initiated investigation of the affair more than two years ago.
Yesterday's opposition calls for Mr Sharon to go followed the airing on television of a tape-recorded conversation between the Prime Minister and a former adviser, a private investigator named David Spector.
On the tape, recorded by Mr Spector, Mr Sharon asks detailed questions apparently relating to funds being legally raised overseas for his political campaigning.
A 2001 report by the Israeli State Comptroller, Justice Eliezer Goldberg, found that some of the monies for Mr Sharon's 1999 campaign for the Likud party leadership were raised illegally.
Questioned by the judge, Mr Sharon repeatedly insisted that he had no direct role in fundraising, which he said had been handled by his two sons, Omri, now also a Likud member of Knesset, and Gilad.
In the wake of the State Comptroller's report, Mr Sharon repaid illegally raised funds to the original donors, but police have since been investigating allegations that he acted illegally, too, in raising the $1.5 million for this repayment.
Mr Sharon has again repeatedly insisted that such financial matters were the province of his sons.
But Mr Spector, who had earlier supported that assertion when questioned by the State Comptroller's office, has now become one of the Prime Minister's principal accusers.
Mr Spector, who evidently made a habit of taping phone conversations with clients and openly video-taped them at his office, has also released video footage in recent weeks featuring both of Mr Sharon's sons and deeply discomfiting to them.