EGYPT: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says national unity talks back at square one

Palestinian efforts to forge a national unity government are back at square one, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday (September 23). Speaking to reporters after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, Abbas accused Hamas of reneging on a number of agreements with Fatah. A deal on a unity government was reached on September 11 and Palestinians hope it will lead to a lifting of Western sanctions imposed on Hamas when it took office in March. The row centres on agreeing a political agenda for the unity coalition that is clear enough in recognition of Israel to satisfy the West but vague enough for Hamas to say it does not contradict their charter, which calls for Israel's destruction. Hamas has said the government's guidelines would be based on a document the Islamists and Abbas agreed in June, which fell short of Western and Israeli demands. President Abbas laid out conditions for a unity government, and said Hamas had gone back on understandings to respect previous agreements as well as the Arab Peace Initiative of 2000 whereby Israel was offered peace with all Arab states in exchange for Israeli returning all land it occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. "The most important of them [the conditions] is that the coming government will respect, or any government will respect agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization, and that the policy of the government , which is another condition, is built upon the Arab Initiative and international legal decisions," said Abbas. "What you can conclude from this is that any agreements signed in the past between the Palestine Liberation Organization and any other side, Israeli, American or otherwise, must be respected. But this agreement [for a national unity government], after it was signed, unfortunately there were regressions, for example the rejection of the Arab initiative and other things, and, as such, when we went to the Security Council we found that the United States and the European states do not see in these stances anything that is beneficial to the building of a national unity government," Abbas said during a news conference in Cairo. Another condition being demanded by the West in return for negotiations is that Hamas recognize the state of Israel, which is implicit in peace accords signed by the PLO. Hamas said on Friday (September 22) it would not join any Palestinian unity government that recognized Israel. But Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Hanniyah reaffirmed Hamas would accept a state as an interim solution on all land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war in return for a long-term truce with the Jewish state but "not in return for recognition." The United States and the European Union have said they would work with a unity government if it met conditions laid out by the Quartet of Middle East mediators -- recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and accepting past interim peace deals. Abbas was also critical of reported comments by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who said that Israel would not relinquish all of the territory occupied in 1967. "For example when Mrs Livni says she does not want a state on the 1967 borders then I ask -- on which borders does she want it?" asked Abbas. "Everyone has agreed to the 67 [borders], even President Bush said there must be the creation of an independent Palestinian state that can live with clear boundaries and that means the end of the Israeli occupation that happened in 1967 - so what do those words mean? Also all United Nations resolutions speak about the decision of 1967. And in addition we will not accept less than [the] 1967 [boundaries]," Abbas said. Mubarak and Abbas also reportedly discussed ongoing negotiations that would see the release of an Israeli soldier captured in June by Palestinian militant groups in exchange for the release of several hundred or thousand Palestinians held by Israel. The government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has spearheaded moves to try and broker a deal. Israel has said there would be no deal with the abductors and launched a major offensive against in Gaza that has killed nearly 220 Palestinians, about half of them civilians. However, rumours of a deal have continued, with Israel considering a staged release of some of the 10,000 Palestinians, a number of them women and minors, held in its jails.

ITN Source | September 23, 2006

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