OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, January 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Three weeks before Israeli elections, polls on Wednesday, January 8, suggested the latest whiff of scandal and corruption accusations against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have for the first time cut into his, as well as his party, popularity ratings.

With Labour rival Amram Mitzna calling for him to either explain how he came by a 1.5-million-dollar loan from a South African businessman or step down, Sharon felt forced to address the issue publicly, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

"This is a shameful political slander and I will prove it, by facts and documents," an angry Sharon told public radio. "Whoever is behind this has but one goal: to overthrow a prime minister."

His outburst came as pundits said the damage was already being felt by his right-wing Likud party, whose lead ahead of January 28 elections has been eroded by a series of scandals.

"This time Sharon's defense system has been breached. The prime minister has failed to brush off all the dirty affairs," said the mass-circulation daily Maariv.

"The daily revelations are mowing down seats" and giving them to other right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties, but also to the secular Shinui, which has made major advances by campaigning against religious parties, it said.

Mitzna's dovish Labour, by contrast, has so far failed to capitalize much on Likud's woes, AFP said.

Sharon had emerged unscathed from a damaging vote-buying scandal in the Likud primaries in December 2003 by sacking his deputy infrastructure minister, Naomi Blumenthal, for refusing to answer police questions.

But his avowed clean-hands policy boomeranged as the latest accusations center on a bank guarantee he and his sons secured from a family friend in South Africa to cover debts he was obliged to pay back for illegal campaign contributions run up during his 1999 Likud leadership race.

A poll Wednesday showed 31 percent of Israelis thought Sharon unworthy of serving as premier in light of the latest accusations and Blumenthal's sacking.

Sharon said before dropping Blumenthal a week ago that "someone who is incapable of saying how she got on this list has no place among the Likud candidates."

He added, "I expect anyone incapable of giving a reply to immediately give up their place on the list."

Despite the sudden questioning of the premier's fitness for office, 46 percent of polled Israelis said Sharon, who has adopted an aggressively hard line against the 27-month Palestinian uprising against the Palestinian occupation, should stay on.

Likud chief strategist Eyal Arad slammed accusations carried Tuesday, January 7, in the daily Haaretz and accused Labor of being behind a smear campaign.

"I have no doubt that the campaign of lies comes from the Labor party," he said, adding: "These lies have been spread with a political aim, it has not been done innocently."

Likud also accused Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein of permitting illegal leaks from his office to influence the outcome of the elections on January 28, The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday.

"Despite the attorney general's decision to freeze political investigations (unrelated to the current election), all the leaks about the Likud have come from his office, while the Labor investigations have been silenced," Likud campaign manager Leor Horev said, quoted by the daily.

Rubinstein said Wednesday the inquiry into Sharon's loan would not be concluded before the elections.

Sharon's son Gilad was already accused by another daily for having received hundreds of thousands of dollars from an Israeli businessman linked to a tourism property development in Greece.

His other son and close aide Omri is due to be questioned by police in connection with illegal financing of his father's 1999 election campaign, the media has reported.

A senior Likud figure quoted in the daily Yediot Aharonot predicted, "Eventually, his sons will topple him into the abyss."

Likud, the main party of Israel's right wing, had been leading in opinion polls before the vote-rigging scandal broke, and was tipped to win around 40 seats out of 120 in parliament.

But that lead quickly dropped by as many as nine seats.

But Labor, campaigning on a dovish pledge to dismantle many Jewish settlements and unilaterally separate from the Palestinians, has failed to capitalize on its rival's disarray.

Polls suggest it would win just 22 seats.

Meanwhile in Nablus, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian Wednesday, hours after killing two other Palestinians.

Israeli troops patrolling the northeastern border area shot dead an unidentified armed man and captured another, AFP said.

Early Wednesday, the Israeli army shot dead an 18-year-old Palestinian in the northern West Bank village of Saida near Tulkarem, Palestinian witnesses said.

They said he was a civilian standing on the roof of a building near a house which soldiers were demolishing when one of them opened fire on him.

But an army spokesman claimed Israeli forces had responded to Palestinian fire and that the young man had been armed.

Another Palestinian man was also killed by Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, a few hundred meters (yards) from the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim, Palestinian witnesses said.