Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is expected to tell Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas at a meeting Sunday that Israel will release some Islamic Jihad and Hamas prisoners without "blood on their hands," senior Israeli diplomatic officials confirmed Saturday night.

The officials said these Islamic Jihad and Hamas prisoners will be from the organizations´ "civic branches," and include only those "not involved in murdering people."

Sunday´s meeting comes about 10 days after Abbas cancelled a meeting with Sharon.

The official reason the PA gave at the time for the cancellation was to protest against Israel´s refusal to release Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners.

The decision comes amid growing pressure from both Abbas and the US to both increase the number of prisoners to be released and to include members of the rejectionist groups, in order to improve Abbas´s standing on the Palestinian street.

A willingness to release these prisoners, however, is a step back from criteria for prisoner release adopted by the cabinet two weeks ago.

At that time the cabinet, in a narrow vote, agreed to adopt Shin Bet criteria for releasing prisoners, which was that prisoners released "did not have blood on their hands," are either administrative detainees or have already been tried, are not members of Islamic fundamentalist or rejectionist organizations, and are either younger than 18, older than 60, or are women."

The senior diplomatic official said Sharon will be speaking to Abbas about "several hundred" prisoners.

The actual release will not take part, however, until a ministerial committee set up to deal with the issue, and which is empowered to change the criteria, meets, most likely this week.

The official said the release probably won´t take place until Abbas returns from Washington, where he will be meeting US President George W. Bush on Friday.

It is expected, however, that the release will take place either before, or during, Sharon´s visit to Washington he is to meet with Bush on July 29 in order to take some US heat off the issue.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom is to arrive in Washington Monday evening for talks with senior US officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The prisoner release issue is expected to play a prominent role.

In addition, Shalom is also likely to hear increasing voices of opposition in the administration to the construction of the security fence, to which he will likely respond that there are certain issues where the United States and Israel "agree to disagree."

Abbas is also expected to raise the issue of the security fence during his meeting with Sharon as well, diplomatic officials said.

Sharon, according to these officials, will tell Abbas that the PA has not yet really begun to start earnestly dismantling and disarming the terror infrastructure and organizations, which according to Israeli intelligence information are continuing to regroup and rebuild.

A failure to do this, Sharon is expected to tell Abbas, may affect the number and rate of prisoners to be released.

The release of prisoners will be phased, and both the timing and number of those to be released will be dependent on PA action against the terrorist infrastructure, the officials said. (© 1995-2003, The Jerusalem Post 07/20/03)