The Israeli prime minister arrived in London on Sunday for three days of talks with British political leaders.

Ariel Sharon will meet with the prime minister, foreign secretary Jack Straw and Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith to discuss the Middle East peace process before departing on Wednesday.

The premier has called on Tony Blair to cut off links with Palestinian president Yasser Arafat.

Israel believes Arafat is undermining the efforts of Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate a ceasefire with terror groups and secure progress towards the aims of the international community's "road map" to peace.

But Blair will push the former army general to meet his own road map commitments on withdrawing troops from the occupied territories.

Ahead of his visit Sharon told two newspapers that his British counterpart should end his relationship with Arafat.

"The problem is that Arafat is undermining the new government," Sharon told Observer and Telegraph journalists.

"It is a good thing Mahmoud Abbas was nominated as prime minister.

"I met him several times. He is one of those who has understood that Israel cannot be defeated by terror and that he understood very early that the suffering of the Palestinians was caused by Arafat and his strategy."

Sharon will find common cause with Blair in a mutual distrust of the BBC.

The corporation has angered both leaders in recent weeks with its reporting on Israel and Iraq respectively, but otherwise relations have been frosty.

Downing Street felt the full force of Sharon's legendary temper when Blair invited the leader of the Israeli Labour Party for talks in the run-up to that country's general election earlier this year.

Sharon responded by barring senior Palestinian delegates from travelling to a Foreign Office conference on reforming the Palestinian Authority.