We will stick to our guns: Sharon to U.S.

Jerusalem (Agencies): Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was heading on late Monday for Washington and tough talks with U.S. President George W. Bush, who has demanded he ease Palestinian suffering and rurb a rising civilian death toll ahead of a possible U.S. campaign against Iraq.

The visit comes a day after six Palestinians three of them civilans and one a four-year-old boy, were killed by Israeli forces.

The daily Yediot Aharonot said Sharon will make clear in his seventh meeting with Hush on Wednesday "that Israeli will not pay with its security the price the Arab countris and Europe are demanding as a condition for their support in the war to topple Saddam Hussein," in particular a swift pullback from occupied land.

The Israeli cabinet met on Sunday to discuss U.S. pressure for restraint as Washington tries to build an anti-Iraq coalition among Arab countries which already accuse the Bush administration of being overtly pro-Israeli. Security officials said that

any attempt to ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians locked up in reoccupied West Bank cities for four months would present a renewed security risk to Israel, where two suicide bombers launched attacks last week.

Meanwhile Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, under domestic and U.S. pressure to reform his administration, convened his cabinet, on Monday to discuss his plans to form a new government.

Palestinian officials reiterated that Arafat was expected to announce the new cabinet in the next few days and that he was likely to bring in new ministers.

"We hope that this cabinet will be a cabinet of new faces," Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel, told reporters at Arafat's presidential headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah before the meeting started.

Sharon called on the Palestinians Monday to replace their current leadership headed by Arafat with a "government of peace."

"To reach peace, the government of murder must be removed and replaced by a government of peace," the right-winger said in an address at the opening of the winter session of the Israeli. parliament, or Knesset.

Sharon has frequently called for Arafat to be dropped, arguing he is an obstacle to reviving the stalled peace process. He has convinced Bush to also call for a change of the Palestinian leadership.

"Your suffering is pointless, your blood has been spilled in vain," Sharon added in his message to the Palestinians, hundreds of thousands of whom have lived since June under Israeli reoccupation in the West Bank: after repeated suicide bombings inside Israel.