ARABS-ISRAEL - Nov. 20 - Sharansky Says Work On Peace Plan Should Wait.

After talks with US Deputy State Secretary Richard Armitage, Housing Minister Natan Sharansky says that work on a Middle East peace plan, known in diplomatic parlance as the "road map", should wait until after Israeli elections in late January. Sharansky says: "We feel that it's better to, with all the reservations which we have, ... to postpone this discussion... after elections in Israel. The political campaign... will make it almost impossible to have deep, rational... discussions". US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Washington would take Israel's view into account but he did not say whether Washington would follow Sharansky's advice. The US originally said it wanted Israel and the PA to agree on a document but US officials have recently started calling the plan an "evolving document" that can undergo change as the parties carry out parts of it. Reeker told a briefing: "The road map is a living document. It's designed to help promote practical efforts to implement the strategy that we've talked about". Another US State Department spokesman said last week that Washington expected slow progress in Middle East talks until the Israeli elections because the Israeli government could not take big decisions in the meantime. A quartet of Middle East mediators, led by the US, has been working on the plan for months, without obvious signs of progress. The other mediators are the EU, Russia and the UN. The aim is to lay out a transition to Palestinian statehood within 3 years, starting with the reform of PA institutions and a partial Israeli troop withdrawal. Jordanian FM Marwan Al Muasher said on Nov. 20 that the quartet would meet at ministerial level and announce the "road map" to peace on Dec. 20. Reeker said: "I don't have any trips to announce or specific meetings to announce. Those are the type of things that are always evolving". Israel and the PA have expressed reservations about various drafts of the peace plan. Sharansky said Israel had reservations about the possibility that the plan will include a "timeline" - a fixed timetable for each side to take specified steps. He said Israel had a bad experience with timelines in the negotiating process that began with the 1993 Oslo agreement. "We learned this game with Oslo, when each time there was an attempt to make a timeline, this date would become something sacred, and all the others expected from us to deliver on this date", he said, adding: "The world was too willing to ignore the fact that Arafat didn't even start [meeting] any of his obligations", he said. The PA leadership is also planning to hold elections early in 2003, but Sharansky said he doubted they would be free. "Until now they live in the conditions of corrupt dictatorship and in this nation, elections, free elections... unfortunately are not possible".