ARABS-ISRAEL - May 12 - Sharon & Abbas To Meet.

A senior PA official says PM Mahmoud Abbas and PM Ariel Sharon will meet on May 16. Israeli officials say the meeting will take place at the end of the week. (This will be the first high-level talks between the two sides in months. The talks will probe how willing both sides are to build confidence and forge ahead with the US-backed peace "road map" that envisions a Palestinian state by 2005. Sharon has met Abbas in the past, but not since he took the influential post of Palestinian prime minister last month. Israel and the United States have refused to include Arafat in peace talks, accusing him of fomenting violence in the 31-month-old Palestinian uprising for independence, a charge Arafat dismisses). PA cabinet minister Abu Amr said: "I think Sharon wants to use this meeting to his advantage as he heads to the White House. Sharon wants to show he is talking to the Palestinians, when in reality nothing is moving forward". But Israeli FM Silvan Shalom said on Israeli radio: "I think we are very serious in our intentions to advance towards peace. But we have always said that any gestures to ease the lives of Palestinians will be carried out only if they don't harm the security of our citizens". Gerald Steinberg, an Israeli political science professor at Bar-Ilan University, said the current peace plan, like many before it, was producing inflated expectations of a swift solution. He said: "The belief that the road map is going to go smoothly enough to create a Palestinian state in three years is very unrealistic in my view. The Israeli and Palestinian publics are still very far apart on core issues".