GAZA/ ISRAEL: Palestinian PM Haniyeh says will renew unity talks following Abbas-Meshaal meeting, Israel's DM Peretz presents new peace plan.

Palestinian Prime Minister Isamail Haniyeh said will renew unity talks to end internal feud after a 'successful' meeting between President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. At the same time in Israel, Defence Minister Amir Peretz presented a new plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Monday (January 22) that Palestinian factions would begin a "national dialogue" after President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal failed to agree on a unity government in talks in Syria. "It was a good meeting," Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, said of the three-hour session in Damascus on Sunday that followed recent fighting between gunmen from the Islamist group and Abbas's Fatah that killed 30 people in Gaza and the West Bank. The violence has largely subsided but Palestinians fear it could resume if Abbas goes ahead with his pledge to call a new election should unity efforts fail, balloting Hamas has said would be tantamount to a coup. "Certainly we will pursue the dialogue to reach a government of national unity. A broad national dialogue will begin in Gaza tomorrow," Haniyeh told reporters. Spokesman for Hamas and Fatah officials said that while Meshaal and Abbas narrowed gaps in the Syrian capital, deep differences remained over setting policy for a power-sharing administration. Hamas has struggled to govern under the weight of U.S.-led sanctions imposed because of its refusal to recognise the right of Israel to exist, renounce violence and abide by interim peace deals. Hamas, which defeated Fatah in a January 2006 election, has proposed a long-term truce with Israel in return for a Palestinian state on all the territory Israeli forces captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Hamas said it would "respect" but not abide by interim peace deals Israel signed with the Palestinians as long as the agreements did not violate the interests of the Palestinian people. The wording would appear to give Hamas room to pick and choose from those accords without making a clear commitment to them. Hamas and Fatah said they are also divided over key posts in any new government, particularly the appointment of an interior minister to oversee Palestinian security services. Also on Monday, Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz promoted a new peace plan that would jumpstart talks on Palestinian statehood by giving Abbas more time to disarm militants. Peretz, dogged by flagging popularity since a widely criticised war in Lebanon, told a forum of policymakers outside Tel Aviv his Labour Party would soon approve a three-stage plan he unveiled this month, and bring it to Israel's cabinet. "I have presented a new political plan, a plan to be adopted by the labour party and presented to the government. This initiative presents a target of a permanent settlement on the basis of two states living in peace and security alongside each other. The plan combines the Road Map with a political horizon that draws on positive elements of the Saudi plan," he said at the conference. Expanding on a plan he unveiled to his party on Jan. 8, Peretz proposed delaying initial requirements under a U.S.-backed peace plan known as the Road Map that the Palestinians disarm militants before negotiations begin. He suggested that peace talks be launched in tandem with the dismantling of militant groups in a bid to give Abbas, a moderate, more time to build up his security forces. Washington plans to pour more than $86 million into that effort. Peretz's plan calls for three stages of negotiations: the first stage, lasting six months, would include confidence building measures such as widening a nearly two-month ceasefire in Gaza and winning the release of an Israeli soldier held there since June in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. During this initial phase, Israel would dismantle unauthorised Jewish settlement outposts built in the occupied West Bank since March 2001, Peretz said. A second stage of talks would set principles for a permanent settlement with Abbas for establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel under temporary borders, Peretz said. Peretz also envisages a third stage of talks lasting at least 18 months, in which the sides would negotiate a permanent peace settlement. Abbas has repeatedly rejected the idea of accepting provisional borders for a state, for fear the Palestinians would be left with a truncated state. Peretz's plan was widely seen as a last ditch effort to fend off challenges by fellow party members for control of Labour in an internal election set for May.

ITN Source | January 22, 2007

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