PARIS, 17 Feb. (Xinhuanet) -- French Foreign Minister Dominique deVillepin suggested Tuesday to send an international peacekeeping force to the Gaza Strip after Israel dismantles 17 settlements there in line with Israeli Primer Minister Ariel Sharon's plan.

    "Why not envisage, as soon as the settlements are dismantled, an intervening force, a peacekeeping force, being deployed in Gaza?" he said in an interview with French public radio France Inter.

    De Villepin proposed also to hold an international conference after the evacuation of the settlements to "mark the passage from one phase to the next" in the peace process.

    Sharon has ordered earlier this month a project to evacuate 17 Gaza settlements in the Gaza Strip, possibly by next summer, as part of a larger plan of unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians.

    Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's national security advisor, Jibril Rajoub, revealed on Tuesday at a news conference held in Ramallah that the Palestinian National Authority has a plan to control the situation in the Gaza Strip if the Israeli army withdraws from there and settlements are evacuated.

    Israeli pullout from Gaza and evacuating Jewish settlements there would never create any kind of political vacuum, he added.

    "We don't like to see the withdrawal and evacuation is unilateral ... The United States and Israel don't have the right to decide who would govern the Palestinian people."

    Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is the only elected and legitimate leader of the Palestinian people everywhere, he said.

    Rajoub also denied reports that Islamic resistance movement Hamas would take control in Gaza if Israel pulls out its troops from there. Enditem