HERZLIYA, Israel, Dec 16 (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon voiced hopes on Thursday for an historic breakthrough in the Middle East conflict with a new Palestinian leadership committed to negotiations and not to violence.
In a keynote speech near Tel Aviv, Sharon insisted that his controversial plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip would be implemented within the coming year and that he hoped that it would be coordinated with the Palestinians.
"In 2005 we have the opportunity for an historic breakthrough in relations between us and the Palestinians," Sharon told delegates.
"We will act with all our might to ensure that this year of opportunity will not become a year of missed opportunities."
Sharon said that the death of veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on November 11 had removed the biggest obstacle to peace in the region and his successors were likely to tread a different path.
"Now there is a real chance that new Palestinian leaders will rise, those who will be elected, who will truly abandon the path of terror and instead will advance a strategy of reconciliation and negotiation without violence, terror and hatred."
The moderate PLO chairman Mahmud Abbas, who has called for an end to the armed intifada, is the favourite to win elections due to take place on January 9 for a replacement for Arafat.
While Sharon refused to meet with Arafat, confining him to his battered headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, he hosted peace talks with Abbas last year when he was briefly Palestinian prime minister.
Sharon unveiled the outlines of his so-called disengagement plan last year when he said that Israel would unilaterally withdraw from parts of the occupied territories in the absence of a partner for peace among the Palestinians.
But in a clear olive branch to Abbas, Sharon said he was ready to involve the Palestinians with the exit from Gaza and four other small Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank.
"In light of the new opportunities and potential of a new Palestinian leadership, Israel will be prepared to coordinate various elements relating to our disengagement plan with the future Palestinian government -- a government which is ready and able to take responsibility for the areas which we leave," the premier told a conference near Tel Aviv.
Sharon said that his government would implement the pullout, which should see all 8,000 Gaza settlers uprooted from their homes by September 2005, "with conviction and without hesitation."
"This initiative is the foundation and cornerstone for the great opportunities which lie before us and it is perhaps one of the most important decisions we have made in the last few years."
Sharon's chances of implementing his pullout would be massively boosted if he can pin down an agreement with the main opposition Labour party to join a new coalition government.
He has been without a parliamentary majority for more than six months since traditional right-wing supporters either quit or were sacked from government over their opposition to the withdrawal plan.
Teams of negotiators from Sharon's Likud party and Labour were expected to meet later on Thursday with the possibility that an agreement could soon be announced.
Labour sources said that Likud had bowed to demands that the opposition party be given eight cabinet posts.
Abbas meanwhile came under fire from Palestinian militants on Thursday over his recent comments that the armed uprising had been "harmful" and that weapons should be laid down.
The radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Abbas' Fatah faction, said that "no one has the right to bring up the question of arms" while the Israeli occupation was continuing.
"If Abu Mazen (Abbas) has something to say to us, he would do better to come and talk with us," Zakaria Zubeidi, the group's leader in its Jenin stronghold, told AFP.
12/16/2004 19:18 GMT - AFP