JERUSALEM (AP) – Two senior U.S. envoys met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday to ask pointed questions about plans to expand the West Bank’s largest Jewish settlement in violation of a peace plan, a U.S. official said.

Israeli lawmakers said Sharon’s government has revived a plan to build 3,500 new housing units around the settlement to encircle Arab east Jerusalem with Jewish neighborhoods.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the settlement expansion was “obviously the subject of discussions” at the meeting with National Security Council official Elliott Abrams and David Welch, assistant secretary of state for the Near East. “I can tell you that the issue was raised,” Ereli said, without giving details.

U.S. officials have repeatedly objected to Israeli announcements of plans to expand Maale Adumim, home to 30,000 Israelis in the desert three miles east of Jerusalem.

Palestinians object to any Israeli construction in the West Bank.

and warn this could kill chances for peace by preventing creation of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital.

The U.S. envoys “were seeking clarification on statements made by the Israeli government with regard to settlement growth,” Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman, said before the meeting.

The U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan requires Israel to halt all construction in settlements, while demanding the Palestinians dismantle violent groups responsible for attacks against Israelis.

Neither side fulfilled these initial obligations, and the plan has foundered since President Bush presented it in 2003.

However, the “road map” plan has received renewed attention since a Feb. 8 summit declaration by Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas of an end to the bloodshed.

The U.S. envoys also met Wednesday with Vice Premier Shimon Peres, but an official in Peres’ office said the envoys did not bring up the Maale Adumim expansion. The official said Peres opposes implementing the construction plan when there is a chance to resume negotiations with the Palestinians.

Menachem Klein, an expert on Jerusalem affairs and adviser to the Israeli negotiating team at the failed Camp David peace talks in 2000, said the plan calls for building houses on the last stretch of empty land between east Jerusalem and the West Bank, completing the ring of Jewish neighborhoods around east Jerusalem.

This would be enhanced by a barrier Israel is building around the city, isolating the Arab areas, he said. Israel says the barrier is needed to keep out Palestinian attackers.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat criticized the plan as an attempt to “seal off” east Jerusalem. “They want to determine the fate of Jerusalem before the negotiations on Jerusalem begin. I hope they (the Americans) will continue opposing it,” he said.

Khalil Tofakji, head of the Palestinian Cartography Center, said that in 1997, the Israeli military confiscated more than 3,000 acres of land from Palestinian villages for the construction. “The Israelis are expanding Jerusalem in a way that annexes more territory in the east,” he said.

Labor lawmaker Yuli Tamir said she began hearing of the revival of the plan a few weeks ago. “There is a feeling in the government that while the world is focused on Gaza, it is possible to build in the West Bank,” she said.

Sharon plans to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank over the summer.

Last year during talks with Bush, Sharon won support for keeping some large West Bank settlement blocs in an eventual peace deal.

Opponents of the Gaza withdrawal suffered a setback Wednesday when the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, ordered Shas legislators to vote against a pullout referendum.

Yosef is reluctant to introduce plebiscites into Israeli politics for fear Israel’s ultra-Orthodox minority could face referendum rulings on religious issues. Without Shas, a parliamentary majority for a referendum is unlikely.

Also Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz warned Israel might not turn over additional towns to Palestinian control unless the Palestinians disarm militants.

Israel transferred Tulkarem on Tuesday, the second of five towns it is to hand over in the framework of the Feb. 8 truce.

Mofaz said the handover of Qalqiliya, Bethlehem and Ramallah was in jeopardy because the Palestinians have not moved against militants.

AP-ES-03-23-05 1755EST

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