GAZA: Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and President Mahmoud Abbas hold unity talks in Gaza

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the Islamist Hamas group has said A Palestinian unity government will not be agreed before the end of next week. The head of the Popular Resistance Committees, Rabah Mahaman, has also announced that his party, whose armed wing initiated attacks on Israeli targets, will not take part in the unity government. Haniyeh made the statement during a cabinet meeting in Gaza on Monday (March 5). The government, which Fatah and Hamas agreed to form after talks in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 8, had originally been expected to be unveiled at the end of last week. Haniyeh said he would hold more talks with Abbas in the next two days, but said more time would be needed after that. He did not list the sticking points. Other officials have said the two sides have yet to agree on who will take the helm of the interior ministry, in charge of the security forces. Forces loyal to Fatah and Hamas fought sporadic street battles in Gaza until the Mecca agreement calmed the violence. But they have pushed ahead with expansion plans despite the agreement to form a unity government, Palestinian and Western officials said. There is little trust between the two sides. Meanwhile, the head Head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Rabah Muhana announced that his group would not take part in a Hamas-Fatah unity government. "We would not be taking part in the 11th Palestinian government, the government which came after agreements between Hamas and Fatah," said Mahamn from Gaza City. He added that his faction believed the letter of designation which Abbas gave Haniyeh imply the recognition of a two-state solution which is an implicit recognition of Israel and respect to past agreements which they reject. Abbas wants to ensure the new government's policy matches a deal reached in Mecca that past Israeli-Palestinian peace deals will be "respected." The Mecca agreement, however, falls short of Quartet demands that a Palestinian government recognise Israel and renounce violence as conditions for removing an aid boycott imposed when Hamas came to power a year ago. Hamas, an Islamist group continues to say it will not formally recognise Israel and its 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Its leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in exchange for a viable state in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

ITN Source | March 6, 2007

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