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Abbas snubs Yemeni bid for unity gov't
 Fatah and Hamas officials on Thursday welcomed a Yemeni initiative to form a new Palestinian unity government. However, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas rejected Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh's proposal, senior Palestinian Authority officials here told The Jerusalem Post. The officials said Saleh phoned Abbas and informed him that Hamas had accepted the initiative and was willing to resume talks with Fatah to resolve the crisis in the PA. Saleh urged Abbas to accept the initiative and to resume talks with Hamas. Abbas is facing growing pressure from some Arab governments and Fatah leaders to patch up his differences with Hamas and to agree to the formation of a unity government. On Wednesday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak also urged Abbas to resume talks with Hamas. Yemen is one of several Arab countries that have been mediating between the parties in recent weeks. Fatah and Hamas officials revealed this week that the two movements were holding secret talks in a bid to end the dispute and form a national unity government. Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal visited Yemen earlier this week for talks with Saleh on ways of resolving the crisis. The Yemeni initiative calls for the resumption of Hamas-Fatah talks on the basis of the "national unity" agreement that was reached last February in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and the Cairo accord that was signed in 2005 between all the Palestinian political factions, a top PA official said. The initiative also called for the "reconstruction" of all of the PA security forces so that members of Hamas and other Palestinian groups would be allowed to serve in them, he said. "President Saleh also proposed that an Arab committee be formed to supervise the implementation of the agreements that were reached in Cairo and Mecca," the official added. "But we have turned down the initiative because we insist that Hamas must first end its military coup in the Gaza Strip and apologize for its actions." Abbas said Thursday he did not rule out the possibility of talking to Hamas. But he reiterated his condition that Hamas first backtrack from its takeover of the Gaza Strip. "When Hamas reverses its actions in the Gaza Strip, we will consider our steps," Abbas told reporters in Amman after meeting with Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit and Foreign Minister Abdul-Ilah al-Khatib. "We maintain our position that says if Hamas retracts from what it committed in Gaza, then we will see how we handle the situation," he said. Abbas also denied reports about secret talks between Fatah and Hamas. "There are no mediation efforts," he said. "There is also no dialogue and no one is authorized to conduct such a dialogue." Although Abbas reportedly turned down the latest initiative, one of his top aides, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, welcomed it, expressing hope that the mediation efforts would succeed. "We welcome all Arab, Palestinian and international efforts and initiatives aimed at ending the military coup in the Gaza Strip," he said. "What happened in the Gaza Strip serves only the interests of Israel and its expansionist schemes." Abbas met with Mubarak in Cairo on Wednesday, and appealed to him to authorize the construction of a moat that would prevent weapons being smuggled into the Gaza Strip from Egypt via the Philadelphi Corridor. Abbas proposed that the corridor - a land barrier under which terrorist groups dig tunnels to move weapons and ammunition - be turned into a trench and flooded with seawater, which would collapse any tunnels dug beneath it. Posted by: Fred 2007-08-11 |
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