Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will have talks in Washington next week about how to save his US-backed plan to withdraw from Gaza blocked by rightists in his own Likud party, aides said yesterday.

Israeli forces meanwhile raided three Palestinian towns in Gaza, killing a security man and wounding 15 people, in response to a militant ambush that killed five Jewish settlers.

Sharon on Tuesday began to brainstorm with allies on how to refloat his scheme for ?disengagement? from conflict with Palestinians. Foreign mediators urged him to stick to his plan, calling it a ?rare moment of opportunity? for regional peace.

The main purpose of Sharon?s US trip was a speech to a convention of the influential pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC. But aides said he would also consult with US officials, and probably President George W. Bush too, about his troubled plan.

?I expect he will evaluate possibilities in the presence of (US officials),? Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said.

Israeli raids in Gaza after settlers slain

A senior Israeli official said Sharon?s itinerary aside from his AIPAC appearance had not yet been fixed but he would likely see Bush, US congressional leaders and Bush?s Democratic challenger in the November election, John Kerry.

Senior political sources said Sharon intended to keep ?disengagement? on track with as few changes as possible despite Israeli media reports he might shut only a few Gaza settlements as an interim step to defuse resistance within Likud.

Sharon?s original plan envisaged scrapping all 21 Gaza enclaves, with 7 500 Jews amidst 1.2 million Palestinians, and four of 120 in the West Bank while retaining and later annexing several larger settlement blocs there.

In Gaza, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian police captain and wounded 15 people in clashes with stone-throwers, including six school children. The Israeli army said some of the Palestinians were wounded in gunbattles.

Israeli army bulldozers, flanked by tanks with helicopters overhead also demolished 10 houses in the inner-city Khan Younis refugee camp and tried to root out more tunnels in Rafah camp used by militants to smuggle in arms from nearby Egypt.

Military sources said the raids also aimed to pre-empt mortar volleys into settler enclaves in Gaza, which Israel occupied ? along with the West Bank ? in a 1967 war but Sharon now deems a violence-ridden liability that should be evacuated.

He had vowed to punish those behind the shooting of a pregnant settler and four daughters in her car, an attack that commentators said probably contributed to the 60 percent ?no? vote in the referendum of Likud?s right-wing rank and file.

The result humiliated Sharon and dismayed Washington, which had endorsed his unilateral moves in the hope they might help revive stalled peace talks but drew Arab ire by assuring Israel it could keep parts of the occupied West Bank in the bargain.

The US led quartet of Middle East mediators declared on Tuesday that the prospect of an end to 37 years of occupation in Gaza presented ?a rare moment of opportunity? in the long search for peace, and urged Israel to press ahead with it.

US, UN, Russian and European Union envoys, in a message praised by Palestinians alarmed that Sharon?s West Bank strategy would strip them of land they seek for a viable state, also reaffirmed the need to resolve sensitive issues by negotiation.

Mark HEINRICH