YEMEN: Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal urges Washington to accept Hamas to safeguard U.S. interests in region

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has called on the United States and the international community to stop isolating the Palestinian Authority following an agreement by Hamas and its rival Fatah faction to form a unity government. Meshaal said during a news conference in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Monday (March 12) that such a change of stance by Washington would safeguard its interests in the region more effectively than supporting Israel. "We call upon the U.S. administration to change its stance, to put to right the wrong situation which has done injustice to the Palestinian people and the Arab region. This, rather than adhering to the Zionist agenda, is the shortest route to safeguarding American interests," said Meshaal, the head of the Islamic movement's politbureau. "Some members of the international community view the Palestinians and Arabs through a narrow keyhole which is the Israeli agenda. I think the so-called international community is harming itself by doing so because Israel is a burden on the international community and a burden on Europe and a burden on the American administration," he added. The US has spearheaded a crippling aid embargo on the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Washington cut off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority and boycotted it politically after the Islamic movement came to power in the Palestinian January 2006 elections. Meshaal welcomed what he called a shift in the European Union's position regarding the Palestinian unity government, which Hamas and Fatah leaders agreed on February 8 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to form. "We appreciate the European stance and the stance of a number of countries which are heading in the direction of acknowledging our rights and welcoming the Mecca (inter-Palestinian) agreement," Meshaal told journalists. The European Union suspended direct aid to the Palestinian government after the Hamas electoral victory. But EU External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told a news briefing in Brussels on March 5 the Mecca agreement to form a unity government was a good one. But the EU would have to see its makeup, programme and actions before making a decision to resume direct aid, she said. France, though, has already said it would be "disposed to cooperate" with the government, and a senior EU official said Britain was another EU state that was softening its stance on the issue. Meshaal has been holding talks with Yemeni leaders since Saturday (March 10). His remarks follow a statement by Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas on Sunday (March 11) that a unity government could be announced early this week. Haniyeh said once the government was formed, he and Fatah leader President Mahmoud Abbas would travel together to Saudi Arabia for a summit aimed at reviving an Arab peace initiative first launched by the host country in 2002. The Mecca deal does not call on the new government to recognise Israel or renounce violence, and includes a vague pledge to respect, rather than accept, interim peace deals. That falls short of meeting the demands of the Quartet of Middle East mediators, made up of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

ITN Source | March 13, 2007

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