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Israel's Sharon to seek peace in `small steps'

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February 14, 2001 

PARIS--(AP) - Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon intends to pursue a Middle East peace plan "on a different basis" than his predecessor, which will advance in "small steps, one after the other," an envoy of the incoming leader said Tuesday.

Peace negotiations, however, cannot continue until violence between Israelis and Palestinians has stopped, said Ovadia Sofer, who was sent by Sharon to convey "a message of peace" to French President Jacques Chirac.

"There can't be negotiations at the same time as violence and terrorism," Sofer, who was Israel's ambassador to France from 1983 to 1992, told reporters after a one-hour meeting with Chirac.

"There is no Israeli violence. There is Palestinian violence that touches the lives of our citizens everyday," Sofer said. He added that Chirac agreed violence must end before peace talks continue.

In the latest attack, Israel assassinated a member of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's bodyguard unit in the Gaza Strip, saying the man was an operative of the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah and had previously attacked a Jewish settlement in the region.

Israel's two rival political camps, led by Sharon and his defeated predecessor, Ehud Barak, are very close to forming a joint government that would seek only a partial peace deal with the Palestinians, a Sharon spokesman said Tuesday in Jerusalem.

The Palestinians have ruled out such proposals in the past, saying the time for interim deals had passed and that a final accord must be struck.

Asked whether a partial peace proposal could work this time around, Sofer said that "all the generous proposals made by Mr. Barak" had been rejected by the Palestinians and Sharon's peace process would involve a more "progressive development, progressive evolution."

"The essence of the intention of Mr. Sharon, with his government of national unity, is to continue the peace process on a different basis," Sofer said. "At the moment, we shall try to make small steps, one after another."