Olmert also said he would not meet Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, and pledged that Israel would begin work to link east Jerusalem to the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim.

The full text of the interview is scheduled to appear on Friday. He said his guidelines for the route of the borders included the large West Bank settlement bloc of Gush Etzion, the Ariel region of settlements in the north, the Jerusalem "envelope", Maale Adumim and the Jordan River as a security border.

The Jerusalem Post also reported that he vowed to go ahead in four years with the planned construction of 3500 housing units on the edge of Maale Adumim as part of plans to connect the  settlement to annexed east Jerusalem. Olmert had said last year that the building plans were frozen, after US criticism.

Should he win this month's election, Olmert said, he would wait a "reasonable" time to see whether Hamas would recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept previous agreements, such as the so-called roadmap peace plan. "We will wait, but I don't intend to wait forever," he was quoted as saying.

Yet, before moving to draw the borders, he said he would hold an "internal dialogue inside Israel" to reach a "wide national consensus about what should be Israel's permanent borders".

"I intend to speak to everyone, and first and foremost the public that lives in the territories," he said ,referring to the  240,000 or so Jewish settlers who living in the occupied West Bank.