"The Oslo accords are dead. Period." Ariel Sharon

If the polls remain as disastrous as they now are for Ehud Barak, expect him to be pushed out and Shimon Peres substituted. Barak has no chance; Peres has some, especially with the "Arab vote". And with Sharon positioning himself as the candidate that believes all past agreements with the PLO are "null and void" he just may have given his opposition the opening they need to outflank him in a desperation move coordinated with the Americans, the Arab "client regimes", Arafat's "Authority", and the Europeans -- all of whom have a great interest in keeping Oslo from being finally buried and keeping Sharon out of power.

SHARON: PAST PEACE PACTS ARE NULL

JERUSALEM (Associated Press - 10 Jan) - Ariel Sharon, the leading contender in Israel's race for prime minister, declared in an interview published Wednesday that he considers the Israeli-Palestinian accords of recent years null and void.

He accused Palestinians of killing the current peacemaking effort in more than 100 days of violence.

Meanwhile, a last-ditch mediation drive was thrown into doubt, with President Clinton's envoy postponing a Mideast trip and a top Palestinian negotiator denouncing Israel's leaders as war criminals.

Senior Israeli and Palestinian officials met late Wednesday to discuss security matters, the second high-level meeting in as many days. The Israeli team, with army commanders and security officials, was headed by Cabinet minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat led a Palestinian team of security chiefs.

In the interview with Kfar Habad, an ultra-Orthodox weekly, Sharon indicated he would not consider himself bound by the landmark interim peace accords signed after secret talks in Oslo, Norway in 1993. The interim accords have guided peacemaking ever since.

``The Oslo agreement exists no more - period,'' Sharon was quoted as saying. The interview, to be published in the magazine this week, was widely excerpted in Israeli newspapers Wednesday.

Sharon holds a double-digit lead in the polls over Prime Minister Ehud Barak ahead of the Feb. 6 election. Sharon formally kicked off his campaign Wednesday night with a rally in Jerusalem.

Sharon's campaign has sought to portray him as a moderate, distancing him from his long history of operations against the Palestinians and a disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that led to his ouster as defense minister. A preview of his television campaign ads Wednesday showed a grandfatherly Sharon, 72, holding a small child and walking through pastoral scenery.

At the rally, he said that as premier he would not negotiate with the Palestinians before the violence subsides. But he added: ``There is no peace without concessions. The peace we will reach will be based on a compromise.''

In the Kfar Habad interview, Sharon was quoted as saying that merely allowing the Palestinians to keep the areas Israel ceded to date was a ``painful concession'' because ``all those places are the birthplace of the Jewish people.''

He did not advocate retaking areas now under Palestinian control - about 40 percent of the West Bank and two-thirds of Gaza. But he indicated that the Palestinians would get no more territory from him if he is elected.

He also promised not to give up control of any of Jerusalem - including a key disputed holy site, where the Al Aqsa Mosque is built atop the ruins of the ancient Jewish Temples - and said Israel must retain all its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for security reasons.

The current round of unrest erupted after Sharon's Sept. 28 trip to the holy site. Since then, 364 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed.

The Palestinians want to create a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza, with sovereignty over the Arab section of Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa compound. They describe the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza as illegal encroachment on their land and demand their removal.

Barak has offered the Palestinians a state in more than 90 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. Clinton's peace proposal also would give the Palestinians sovereignty over east Jerusalem and the holy site in exchange for Palestinians dropping their claim that millions of refugees and their families have the right to return to homes in what is now Israel.

Barak has worked for an agreement with the Palestinians before he faces the voters. But all sides now doubt a peace deal can be reached before Clinton's term ends Jan. 20.

U.S. mediator Dennis Ross postponed a trip, set for Thursday, meant to try to narrow the gaps between the sides. Larry Schwartz, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, said Clinton held up the mission to see whether the level of violence can be reduced.

Also Wednesday, chief Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo demanded that Barak and his Cabinet be prosecuted for approving the assassination of Palestinians figures.

Palestinians say more than a dozen leading activists have been killed by Israeli special forces. Israel has acknowledged targeting Palestinians who plan attacks against Israelis but has not admitted involvement in specific cases.

ROSS DELAYS PEACE VISIT, SHARON SPELLS OUT HARD LINE FOR PALESTINIANS

JERUSALEM, Jan 10 (AFP) - The Middle East peace process appeared doomed Wednesday as US mediator Dennis Ross postponed indefinitely a visit to the region, and Israeli right-winger Ariel Sharon, favorite to win next month's elections, declared the seminal 1993 Oslo accords dead.

But efforts to end more than three months of deadly violence sputtered on, with a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian political and security officials due later Wednesday, Palestinian officials said.

US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in an interview with AFP that Ross, originally scheduled to arrive Wednesday, had postponed his trip pending the completion of the security talks.

"The security aspect of this has been of great concern to us, and it was felt that Dennis should wait," Albright said.

"The security people are meeting, and we want to make sure that that part of the process is working and Dennis will be going, but I can't give you an exact time," she said. "But it is wrong to say the trip is off."

Albright said she would further discuss the matter with Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, whom she will see during a stop in Paris Thursday.

She stressed the importance of ending months of deadly clashes in order to restart peace negotiations, the prospects for which have dimmed substantially as President Bill Clinton's term winds down.

"Time is definitely running out, and decisions have to be made," she said, expressing frustration with what she termed a "kind of kicking-the-can approach" to the peace process of some Middle East leaders.

"We are running out of time; the road is ending," Albright said.

She also slammed Sharon's death pronouncement for the Oslo accords, the basis of the current peace process, as a "mistake."

"We believe that the Oslo Accord is the basis of very important work and something that has created the possibilities for an agreement" between Israel and the Palestinians," Albright said.

"So I would hope very much that he would not declare it dead; I think it's a mistake," she added.

"The work that has been going throughout this administration has been based on the Oslo Accord and a lot of good has come out of it," she said.

Sharon's Likud party earlier Wednesday backed up Sharon's remarks, given in an interview with an Orthodox Jewish weekly Kfar Habad to be published this week.

"Oslo, of course, is dead, and died in practice a long time ago", Sharon's foreign policy advisor and Likud official Zalman Shoval said.

"The Oslo accords are dead. Period," Sharon told Kfar Habad, according to excerpts published Tuesday on the Yediot Aharonot newspaper's internet site.

The hawkish right-wing leader is far ahead of his main rival, caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak, in the polls for the February 6 prime ministerial election.

While Shoval said a Sharon government "would aim at reaching long-term, interim agreements with some aspect of permanency", the Likud leader indicated he would be offering the Palestinians far less than they could have expected under Barak.

He would concede no more than 45 percent of the West Bank captured by Israel in 1967 and none of east Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinians as the capital of a future state.

Israel would also not demolish any of the Jewish settlements Sharon helped to build all over the West Bank and Gaza Strip when he was last in government with the express purpose of hampering the viability of such a state.

Shoval said, however, that Likud was sure peace negotiations would resume -- "after a necessary recess" -- with the involvement of the new US administration led by President-elect George W. Bush.

Shoval added that he hoped Bush would not "rush into picking things up where Clinton left them", and that he would rather "reassess the peace process as a whole".

"There will have to be mutual concessions", and "sacrifices will indeed have to be made by both sides", if an accord is to be reached, he nevertheless added.

Reacting to Sharon's statements, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP they were a recipe for war.

"What he has proposed means that it is impossible to reach an agreement. The result is a description of war," Erakat said.

On the ground Wednesday at least seven Palestinians were injured in clashes with soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but the territories were relatively quiet.

A Palestinian official said Israeli and Palestinian political and security experts would meet late Wednesday at the Erez crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

This followed a "positive" meeting on Tuesday between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli security cabinet member Amnon Lipkin-Shahak.

The Palestinians say Israel must lift its blockade on the territories and halt "aggressions" before cooperation can resume.

Israel says it will not hold peace negotiations while there is violence on the ground.

A total of 375 people have been killed since the intifada flared after Sharon visited a disputed east Jerusalem holy site on September 28, most of them Palestinians killed by Israeli troops.

The Palestinian Authority's deputy health minister Muzer as-Sharif alleged Wednesday the Israeli army is shooting to kill and has increased its use of live ammunition.

And the London-published Jane's Defence Weekly reported that Israel is to pour new cash into its army intelligence unit because it has proved an effective weapon in clashes with armed Palestinians.