WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) -- The United States urged Israel Friday not to exile or assassinate Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"Our position on such questions, the exile or assassination of Yasser Arafat, is very well known. We're opposed and we've made that very clear to the government of Israel," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told reporters in Washington.
He was commenting on Israeli media reports that quoted Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as saying that Arafat and Lebanese militant leader Hassan Nasrallah could become targets for assassination.
Sharon's comments follow a decision by the Israeli Cabinet in September to "remove" Arafat, a statement which was interpreted by international observers as the desire to either expel or kill the Palestinian leader.
"There's no question that the government of Israel knows our view on this matter," said Armitage, responding to questions about when and how Washington conveyed its position to Israel.
Later, deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told a briefing at the State Department that Armitage was reiterating "a long-standing U.S. position regarding Arafat.
"We do not support either the elimination or the exile of Mr. Arafat. It's not our position, hasn't been, and the Israeli government knows that," said Ereli.
Ereli also rejected speculation that Washington's failure to strongly condemn the assassination last week of the founder of the militant group Hamas, Sheik Ahmad Yassin, had encouraged Sharon to issue similar threats against Arafat.
Borrowing a phrase used by one of the reporters about U.S. position on the Hamas leader's assassination, Ereli said: "There is no green light, there has been no green light, there will be no green light."
He said the United States had no advance knowledge of the attack on Yassin and was "deeply disturbed by it, and we urge Israel to bear in mind the consequences of its actions."
"There was no advance knowledge, there was no advance coordination. So there should be no supposition or presumption of anything remotely resembling a green light," he added.
Earlier Friday, in interviews to three Israeli newspapers -- Maariv, Yediot Ahronot and Haaretz -- Sharon explained his plans for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A key point of the plan is his offer for unilateral withdrawal from all of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank settlements of Ganim, Kadim, Homesh and Sanur by late next year. He said the final decision will be taken by his Likud Party.
Sharon also plans to hold a referendum among his party members after his April 14 meeting with President George W. Bush in Washington and has pledged to implement the plan for withdrawal if the party members endorse it.
According to the plan, Israel will withdraw from all of Gaza but retain a narrow corridor along the Egyptian border to prevent Palestinians from acquiring weapons from Egypt.
Sharon said if the Palestinians continued to carry out attacks against Israel after the withdrawal, he would cut off water and electricity to Gaza as a punishment to the militants.
But the comments he made in his interview to the Haaretz newspaper caused alarm in the world capitals. Asked whether Arafat and Lebanese guerrilla Nasrallah were targets for assassination, Sharon said the two leaders "should not feel immune. ... Anyone who kills a Jew or harms an Israeli citizen, or sends people to kill Jews, is a marked man."
In his interview to Maariv, Sharon said insurance companies shouldn't write policies on Arafat whom he described as "the obstacle" to peace.
Palestinian leaders said they were taking Sharon's threats seriously.
