forging a US-brokered Middle East peace deal in Washington this week.

While his booming voice and burly presence were due to be missing, Sharon's views were certain to be aired when Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright held crucial talks in the US capital yesterday.

It has been quite a comeback for Sharon, the voice of security experience in Netanyahu's cabinet and a 70-year-old Likud party member who was previously snubbed by Washington and once assailed by Netanyahu as "a permanent subversive''.

Now Sharon's stamp of approval is seen as critical in any moves to transfer West Bank land to Palestinian self-rule.

At issue still is whether Netanyahu will accept a US- and Palestinian-backed proposal for Israel to hand over 13 percent more of the West Bank. Netanyahu has so far resisted. Sharon has led the fight in cabinet to limit the transfer.

"Anything which is beyond nine percent endangers Israel tremendously,'' Sharon said last week. "But there are maybe other things that are important for the Palestinians,'' he added, leaving room for manoeuvre.

Sharon's peacemaking role has widened in recent months. He is far more influential than his title as minister of national infrastructure would suggest.

He has had secret talks with Palestinians and helped revive relations with Jordan soured by a secret spy mission gone wrong.

Sharon has also shared his security maps with US National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and met Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk in Washington.

He wrote that underlying this view is an American notion the Israeli position on the long-delayed handover of West Bank land is based not so much on the much-vaunted grounds of security as on the intrigues of Israeli politics.

Sharon greeted rumours that Netanyahu was considering him for foreign minister dismissively on Tuesday, saying that his concessions on important issues could not be bought with a more senior political appointment.

For years Israeli leaders have grappled with the question of whether it is better to have Sharon, Israel's proverbial "bulldozer'', fighting his battles in the Cabinet tent or from the outside.

In past governments Sharon led the Jewish state into its most unpopular war in Lebanon while defence minister in 1982 and fought Washington over Jewish settlement expansion as housing minister in the early 1990s.

But Sharon has also shown flexibility in the past.

It was Sharon who as defence minister in 1982 dismantled the Jewish settlement of Yamit in the Sinai desert before that occupied territory was handed back to Egypt under a 1979 peace treaty with Israel. -- Reuter