Sharon Sworn In

Sharon was sworn in Wednesday as Israel's new prime minister, its fifth in six years.

Earlier, Sharon's broad-based coalition government was approved by the Israeli parliament, 72-21, but not without a test of its unity when the conservative Shas party threatened to pull out of the coalition before it was seated.

Sharon, who ran on a platform of unity, security and peace, said the Israelis and Palestinians are "fated" to live together. He offered that Israel is willing to negotiate peace, but only if violence between Israelis and Palestinians ends.

"If our Palestinian neighbors choose the path of peace," Sharon said just before being sworn in, "they will find in me and the government I head an honest and genuine partner."

In response, Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Sharon's speech was "too general to analyze."

Arab World Reaction to Sharon Government

Palestinians in Lebanon claimed Wednesday that with the unveiling of his national coalition government, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has set the stage for war with the Arabs.

The rhetoric was less heated among some other Arabs, but distrust of Sharon -- blamed for a 1982 massacre in Lebanon's refugee camps -- was evident across the region.

Jordan's Foreign Minister Abdul-Illah Khatib met Wednesday with the European Union's special Middle East envoy, Miguel Moratinos, the official Petra news agency said. Petra said Khatib stressed the need to resume from where they stalled Palestinian-Israeli and Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations.

In Syria Wednesday, Al Baath, the daily newspaper of the ruling Baath party, said Sharon, "whose bloody history is well known, is not ready to open the door to any international campaign that aims at resuming the peace process from where it left off."

Syrian President Bashar Assad received the EU's Moratinos earlier this week. After the meeting, Moratinos' spokesman, Bernardino Leon, told reporters Moratinos relayed to the Syrians that Sharon was ready to reengage with them. But Leon added that Sharon "does not have a precise plan for negotiations with Arabs so we are not conveying any precise message concerning negotiations."

Kuwaiti political scientist Ahmed al-Baghdadi said there may be a possibility for peace under Sharon, in part because the Israeli Cabinet includes the Labor Party's Shimon Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

But Egypt's leading daily Al-Ahram newspaper printed a cartoon Wednesday showing Peres gripping a dove of peace for a knife-wielding Sharon to slaughter.
















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