Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein said Friday that it is "not legitimate" to remain silent in the face of police questioning on issues in the public interest, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's son Gilad did Thursday.

Gilad Sharon's refusal to cooperate with police on the so-called "Greek island" affair is an example of a widening trend, Rubinstein said, and is particularly serious in this case because police are legally unable to conduct searches themselves. The prime minister's Sycamore Ranch in the Negev, where Gilad Sharon lives, is exempt from a search warrant.

Rubinstein added that refusal to answer police questions can support evidence against a suspect, and denied that political considerations led to the investigation against the prime minister's family.

Police had been planning to ask Gilad Sharon whether real estate tycoon David Appel's decision to pay Gilad hundreds of thousands of dollars to market a still-unbuilt resort for Israelis on a Greek island that Appel was trying to lease bore any connection to the fact that Gilad's father was then foreign minister. Gilad Sharon was allegedly promised millions if Appel won the lease.

This is the second time that Gilad Sharon has remained silent when questioned by police. On July 17, he exercised his right to remain silent when interrogated by the National Fraud Squad on the Cyril Kern loan affair, in which the prime minister and his sons are suspected of bribery and violating campaign finance laws.

The prime minister's other son, MK Omri Sharon, is also due to be questioned shortly about the affair. In media interviews Thursday, Omri said that since he is a public figure, if he is interrogated, "I will do what I believe must be done. It can be assumed that I will talk."

Meanwhile, Austrian law enforcers appear to have accepted Ariel Sharon's defense in the so-called Cyril Kern loan affair, saying they see no reason for an Israeli police investigation in Vienna.

According to Austrian officials, there is also no basis for media reports that a deal was worked out whereby full diplomatic relations between the two countries would be renewed in return for Austria's refusal to cooperate in the Kern investigation. On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and his Austrian counterpart, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, announced that relations would be restored and Israel would soon appoint a new ambassador to Vienna.

An Austrian court, the equivalent of an Israeli district court, is due to decide this month whether to permit Israeli investigators to pursue the Kern case in Austria, following an appeal from the Justice Ministry in Jerusalem. The Austrian authorities have twice turned down requests for an investigation of this nature, in January and in July.

The affair began with suspicions that the prime minister and his sons violated campaign finance laws in the 1999 Likud primary by obtaining foreign donations. They then allegedly repaid the illegal donations with more foreign money, sent by Kern, a British businessman living in South Africa and a personal friend of Ariel Sharon, via Austria to Gilad Sharon's bank account in Tel Aviv and then to the Sharon family account in Sderot. For this reason, the police wished to carry out investigations in both South Africa and Austria. However, the requests were somehow delayed, with the one to South Africa sent only in October 2002 and the one to Austria only three months after that.

Senior Austrian ministry officials also noted that in their country, it is not illegal to raise foreign donations for election campaigns. Had it been clear that Sharon received an illegal gift, the answer would have been positive, one official said.

The Israeli Justice Ministry appealed the lower court's decision to a higher court via its Austrian counterpart, and that court will decide this month whether to accept the appeal.

<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/324709.html>http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/324709.html