Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon flew in Texas on Sunday for the scheduled summit on Monday with US President George W. Bush. The two leaders are widely expected to center on the thorny issue of the Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.

In the talks to be held on Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, Sharon is to seek support for evacuating 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four others in the West Bank, while expanding the largest settlement bloc in the West Bank.

According to officials from both countries, the two leaders will meet on Monday morning following a pre-summit talks between Sharon and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Sharon made his 10th trip to the United States since he came to power in 2001 amid strong opposition from home against the evacuation plan by the right-wing Jewish extremists, who threatened to kill him should the plan be put to practice.

The Israeli leader has been resorting to Bush's pledge in the previous talks not to give up major settlements in the West Bank to calm down the opposition to his "unilateral disengagement" slated for July in the Gaza Strip.

While Washington has several times expressed understanding of Sharon's claim for the large settlement blocs in the West Bank, itseemed quite reserved about his announcement last week to expand the largest bloc to link the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, which the Palestinians also claimed as the capital of their future statehood.

Bush said on Friday that the US-inspired peace plan in the form of "road map" has "clear obligations on settlement...we expect the prime minister (Sharon) to adhere to those road map obligations."

The "road map" peace plan, which initially foresaw a Palestinian state side by side in peace with Israel in 2005, envisions the Palestinian statehood in 2008 after being drawn up by diplomats from the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

On the eve of the Sharon-Bush talks, the volatile situation between Israel and the Palestinians suffered the severest setback since both Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas declared a cease-fire on Feb. 8.

The Palestinians accused Israeli soldiers of killing three Palestinian teenage boys in the town of Rafah near the borders between the southern Gaza Strip and Egypt.

The Israeli army, saying the soldiers had shot warnings and received no response from the three before killing them, claimed that Palestinian militants later fired some 70 mortars at the Jewish settlements in Gaza.

Abbas and Sharon exchanged accusations of violation of the fragile truce, with the Israeli prime minister saying en route to the United States that he would raise the issue to President Bush during their talks on Monday.

Source: Xinhua