MIDDLE EAST: Israel's most senior state prosecutor yesterday formally recommended that Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon be indicted for taking bribes - a recommendation that, if accepted by the country's attorney general, would almost certainly force Mr Sharon's resignation.
But aides to the attorney general, who is expected to take a final decision on whether to press charges in the next few weeks, made clear that no indictment will be filed unless there is a very high likelihood of conviction, since the state prosecution service dare not force Mr Sharon from office only to see him acquitted of any wrongdoing.
Israel TV last night quoted the attorney general, Mr Meni Mazoz, as saying privately that he considered the case to be "borderline and problematic".
Mr Sharon (76) has been under a cloud of suspicion for more than three years over various alleged financial misdeeds. The case in which State Prosecutor Ms Edna Arbel yesterday recommended he be tried - she went so far as to draft the charge sheet - concerns payments made to Mr Sharon's son, Gilad, by a business associate and real-estate developer, Mr David Appel.
Mr Appel, somewhat bizarrely, has already been charged with bribing the prime minister - for paying Gilad hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain Mr Sharon's support for an abortive Greek island tourism project and the rezoning of land for development outside Tel Aviv.
Now the attorney general, the country's top legal official, must decide whether Mr Sharon knew why Mr Appel was paying his son such extraordinarily large sums of money, and whether he acted differently on Mr Appel's behalf as a consequence of the payments.
Aides to Mr Mazoz anticipate a decision in the next month or two.
Even Mr Sharon's own party colleagues say he would have to step down if charged. Some opposition Knesset members are urging him to resign now - to preserve the dignity of his office, as Meretz legislator Mr Ran Cohen put it yesterday. Mr Sharon has denied any wrongdoing.
Yesterday's recommendation weakens an already beleaguered prime minister, whose standing has fallen drastically since he was re-elected only 14 months ago. Many in his own Likud party are at odds with him over his declared plans to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip, dismantling Jewish settlements there, and from parts of the West Bank.
The Bush administration is urging him to sanction a more dramatic West Bank pullout. And a minority of Israelis endorse widespread international criticism of him for ordering last week's killing of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Emerging briefly from hiding yesterday, the sheikh's successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, renewed threats to target Mr Sharon - and extended them to President Bush.
Attacking the US for vetoing a UN Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israel over the killing, Mr Rantisi told a crowd of 5,000 supporters at Gaza City's Islamic University: "We knew that Bush is the enemy of God, the enemy of Islam, the enemy of Muslims. America declared war on Allah. Sharon declared war on Allah. And Allah has declared war on America, Bush and Sharon." Security has been tightened around Mr Sharon and other leading Israeli figures, and upgraded, too, at potential prime targets for Hamas attack around the country.
Meanwhile, an Israeli parliamentary inquiry has claimed that the country's intelligence services "fouled up" their assessments of both Iraq's and Libya's non-conventional weapons capability. Issuing the 80-page public report - other sections of which will remain classified - Knesset member Yuval Steinitz, a member of the governing Likud party, urged an urgent "house cleaning and reorganization" of the intelligence services as a consequence.
The eight-month Knesset inquiry, which presages similar probes in both the US and UK, found that Israel overestimated Iraq's capabilities, but concluded that this mistaken assessment did not influence the American decision to oust Saddam. As for Libya, the probe lamented that the intelligence services failed to recognize Libya's advanced WMD programme until Col Gadafy publicly declared his intention to abandon it three months ago.