Iranian leader: US military is Iraq’s top problem

Iran’s supreme leader told the visiting Iraqi prime minister Monday that the U.S. military presence is the main cause of Iraq’s problems, according to Iranian state television, making clear his opposition to a U.S.-Iraqi security pact.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s talks with Iranian leaders during his three-day visit here have focused on the proposed security agreement that Iran fears will keep the American military in neighboring Iraq for years.

Al-Maliki has tried to push Iranian leaders to back off their fierce opposition to the proposed pact, promising that Iraq will not be a launching pad for any attack on Iran.

But the agreement has become a point of contention as Baghdad tries to balance its close ties to rivals Washington and Tehran.

Iran, which has repeatedly said the way to end instability in Iraq is for U.S. forces to withdraw, believes the proposed pact could lead to permanent U.S bases on its doorstep amid fears of an eventual American attack.

“Occupiers who interfere in Iraq’s affairs through their military and security might … are the main problems,” Iran’s state television quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying Monday.

Khamenei said Iraqis have to “think of a solution to free” themselves from the U.S. military. Though he did not explicitly mention the security agreement, he said Iraqis — not Americans — must decide the fate of their country.

“That a foreign element gradually interferes in all Iraqi affairs and expands its domination on all aspects of life is the main obstacle in the way of progress and prosperity of the Iraqi nation,” the TV quoted Khamenei as saying.

Khamenei, who has the final say in Iran over government decisions, said the U.S. will fail to achieve its goals in Iraq.

“We are certain that the Iraqi people, through unity and effort, will get past these difficult conditions. For sure, America’s dream for Iraq will not come true,” Khamenei was quoted as telling al-Maliki.

Al-Maliki’s visit to Tehran, his second this year, appeared aimed at getting Iran to tone down its opposition and ease criticism within Iraq. Followers of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — who has close ties to Tehran — have held weekly protests in Iraq against the deal.

The proposed security pact also faces strong criticism from members of al-Maliki’s own Shiite-dominated coalition.

Two Iraqi officials familiar with the negotiations warned on Sunday that a deal is unlikely to be reached before the end of President Bush’s term in January unless Washington backs off some demands seen as giving American forces too much freedom to operate in Iraq and infringing on Iraqi sovereignty. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding the negotiations.

Though both Iraq and Iran are Shiite-majority countries, the two were hostile to each other throughout Saddam Hussein’s regime. Their eight-year war after Saddam invaded Iran in 1980 cost about 1 million lives.

But when Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime fell and Iraq’s Shiite majority took power after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, long-standing ties between the Shiites of both countries improved, though the two neighbors have yet to sign a peace treaty.

Source: Associated Press

Pak ruling party vows to cut Musharraf’s power

Pakistan’s ruling party has said it is determined to curtail the powers of the presidency in favor of parliament, whether President Pervez Musharraf likes it or not. Staunch U.S. ally Musharraf, facing a chorus of calls to resign, told journalists on Saturday, in his first meeting with the media for weeks, that he had no plan to quit.

At the same time, Musharraf sounded a generally conciliatory tone saying parliament, dominated by opponents since his allies were defeated in a February election, was supreme.

Musharraf’s fate has consumed the attention of the new coalition since the polls, despite an economy that is deteriorating rapidly and a potent threat from al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Pakistan’s stock market and currency have both come under pressure because of a combination of factors, including the uncertainty over Musharraf and worry about more turmoil in the nuclear-armed country.

In the meeting with journalists on Saturday, Musharraf said he would accept proposed constitutional amendments the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto aimed to push through parliament.

But in what media interpreted as a warning he would not tolerate a cut in his powers, a confident-sounding Musharraf indicated he would not like to be reduced to a ceremonial head of state, saying he could not become a “useless vegetable.”

The People’s Party brushed aside any objections, saying parliament was sovereign and could make or amend laws and the constitution regardless of whether Musharraf liked it or not.

“Such hollow warnings would not deter the democratic forces from restoring the powers of the parliament,” PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said in a statement. “THROWING A GAUNTLET”

Bhutto’s widower Asif Ali Zardari, who leads her party, has called Musharraf a “relic of the past” and says the PPP does not recognize him as a constitutional president.

Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister former army chief Musharraf overthrew in a 1999 coup and who leads the second largest party in parliament, wants Musharraf impeached or tried for treason.

Sharif’s brother, Shahbaz, was on Sunday elected chief minister of Punjab, the country’s richest and politically most important province, bolstering the power of their party that won the most seat in the province’s assembly in February.

Another looming challenge to Musharraf is a lawyers’ movement that sprang up last year to fight his attempts to dictate to the judiciary. It is seeking to hasten his departure with a countrywide protest campaign this week.

Asked how would he react if the government tried to impeach him, Musharraf said: “I will abide by whatever parliament decides. Let the parliament decide in a constitutional way.”

Musharraf is believed to be seeking immunity for suspending the constitution and imposing emergency rule for six weeks in November. The PPP leadership, wary of a destabilizing confrontation, is trying to make his exit “dignified,” according to an adviser to Zardari.

Despite Musharraf’s public stance, political insiders say he recognizes that he will have to quit rather than be the cause of more upheaval, and it has become a matter of timing.

But the Dawn newspaper said on Sunday Musharraf appeared confident, perhaps because he had been assured he did not have to worry about impeachment: “He does not seem under pressure to go away in a hurry.”

The News newspaper said Musharraf had thrown down a gauntlet to his opponents: “By stalling his departure and by forcing the political system to unnecessarily spend its energies on now trying and impeaching him, he is directly prolonging the uncertainty.”

Russia to Participate in Forming New Rules of Game in Economy: Medvedev

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday that Russia wishes to take part in forming new rules of game in the world economy, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

“Russia is a global player today. Understanding our responsibility for the fate of the world, we wish to participate in forming new rules of game, not because of the notorious imperial ambitions, but because we have official opportunities and resources here,” Medvedev told the opening of the St. Petersburg economic forum.

The president also said the role the United States has played in the world economy does not correspond to its true capabilities, describing this as one of the key reasons behind the current global financial crisis.

He said the gap between the U.S. leading role in the global economic system and its real abilities was one of the key reasons for the current world financial crisis.

“No matter how huge the American market is, or how reliable the American financial system is, they are unable to substitute global commodity and financial markets,” he said.

In his view, the current economic crisis may yet become the worst in history.

“The year 2007 turned out to be one of the most difficult years in the past decades, and if one gives credence to experts, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s,” he said.

“The rate of growth of the world economy has slowed down dramatically in general. According to some forecasts, the current crisis may be a recurrence of the worst crisis in the world history,” Medvedev said.

Moreover, the president said the growing economic nationalism of some countries is affecting world economic development.

Some countries were seeking to protect their economic sovereignty and gain maximum advantages for their citizens without sharing these benefits with their neighbors, he said.

“I don’t think that such a strategy is the best solution to all problems in the current crisis,” Medvedev said.

In particular, he cited the decision by some governments to take protectionist measures in the agricultural sector in response to a rapid growth in world food prices.

Rising food prices have been blamed on a number of factors, including growing food demands and a hike in oil prices, which has pushed up fertilizer costs and transportation rates, according to the president.

Medvedev said an overall growth in global prices, especially for fuel, was due to investors’ disappointment in the United States as an investment for savings and urged the creation of new liquid investment instruments.

Source: Xinhua

Pakistan officially asks UN to probe Benazir slaying

Pakistan’s new government has officially asked the United Nations to investigate the assassination of Benazir Bhutto last December, UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said Friday. She said the request was contained in a letter from Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi delivered to UN chief Ban Ki-moon by the Pakistani ambassador here Friday.

“The Secretary General has not taken a decision on it yet. He has just received the letter and the letter is being studied,” she added. The UN has already hinted that the request was unlikely to be approved, notably because no foreign country is suspected of involvement in the Bhutto murder. UN sources also say the cost of such a probe would be prohibitively expensive for uncertain results, six months after the slaying. Former premier Bhutto was slain in a suicide and gun attack at an election rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on December 27, triggering days of deadly riots across the country. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf blamed an Al-Qaeda-linked militant for the attack and refused to seek a UN probe. A coalition led by Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) trounced Musharraf’s allies in general elections in February. Bhutto’s supporters have cast doubt on the Pakistani probe into her death, questioning whether she was killed by a gunshot or the blast and criticising authorities for hosing down the scene of the attack within minutes.

Source: AFP

Zimbabwe opposition says court allows rallies

Zimbabwe’s opposition will hold rallies in the capital Sunday following a favorable court ruling, an official said Saturday, with only weeks to go before its leader faces longtime President Robert Mugabe in a runoff.

The ruling came a day after the opposition said it had been told that all the party’s rallies in the country had been banned indefinitely.

Nqobizitha Mlilo, a spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change, said Saturday’s ruling meant the police ban cannot be enforced.

The embattled opposition, however, suffered setbacks elsewhere, including the arrest of a prominent member.

Also Saturday, a government minister was quoted as accusing aid groups of campaigning for the opposition and using money donated by the U.S., among Mugabe’s harshest critics, to destabilize the government.

Opposition presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai beat Mugabe and two other candidates in the first round of presidential voting March 29 but did not garner the 50 percent plus one vote necessary to avoid a runoff, which is set for June 27.

Tsvangirai spoke to small groups of voters Saturday around Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city. Reporters traveling with him said small crowds greeted him enthusiastically.

At one stop, where it appeared he had planned a rally, riot police were on hand and told him no gatherings were allowed.

“We have to find a way of getting word to voters under these conditions,” Mlilo said Saturday. But he expressed confidence, saying Mugabe’s crackdown “will only strengthen the resolve of Zimbabweans to finish this regime off.”

Mlilo said it was unlikely Tsvangirai would address Sunday’s rallies in Harare.

Also Saturday, police took opposition lawmaker Eric Matinenga from his Harare home and detained him at a station outside the capital, accusing him of fomenting violence, said his lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa.

Matinenga was detained on similar charges earlier in the week, but released because of a lack of evidence. Scores of opposition activists have been arrested in recent weeks.

Matinenga, himself an attorney, has represented opposition leaders in a string of high profile court cases.

A police spokesman had said Friday that even Tsvangirai could be arrested. Tsvangirai left the country soon after the March voting, and his party has said he was the target of a military assassination plot. He has survived at least three previous assassination attempts. Tsvangirai had only returned to Zimbabwe in late May to campaign for the runoff.

Tsvangirai’s party, blaming state agents, says at least 60 of its supporters have been slain in the past two months.

Mugabe’s critics also accuse him of using food as a political weapon, though he charges it is his Western enemies who have done so.

Earlier in the week, the government ordered all independent aid groups to suspend field work indefinitely, a move the U.N. says puts at least 2 million people at greater risk of starvation, homelessness and disease in a country in economic collapse.

Without the private agencies, impoverished Zimbabweans will be dependent on the government and Mugabe’s party, both of which distribute food and other aid.

Aid groups have denied charges they have taken sides in the political contest.

Bright Matonga, Mugabe’s deputy information minister, was quoted Saturday in The Herald, a government mouthpiece, as saying the aid groups would have to apply for new operating permits.

“For a long time now, some of these (groups) have been operating like political parties rather than civil society. They have been going around the country distributing food, claiming to be helping the needy but then they tell the communities they visit that they will not get any more food aid if they vote for … President Mugabe,” Matonga was quoted as saying.

Mugabe has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 and was once hailed as a liberator who promoted racial reconciliation and economic empowerment.

But he has been accused of clinging to power through election fraud and intimidation, and of destroying his country’s economy through the seizure of white-owned farms beginning in 2000.

Discontent over the economy propelled Tsvangirai to win in the first round of voting.

Source: Associated Press

Russia rejects Western mediation in Georgia conflict

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday brushed off foreign mediation over Georgia’s separatist Abkhazia region, as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana visited the disputed territory.

Medvedev also said Georgia should sign a pact of non-aggression with Abkhazia and reverse what Russia claims is a Georgian troop build-up close to the rebel region.

Faced with his biggest foreign policy challenge since coming to power on May 7, Medvedev met with the pro-Western Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who earlier warned there was a risk of war with Russia.

Speaking at the start of the meeting at a regional summit of ex-Soviet nations in Saint Petersburg, Medvedev referred to Western concerns and said: “I think we can sort out our relations by ourselves.” The United States and NATO have both strongly criticised a decision by Russia, announced last week, to send additional troops to Abkhazia as part of a wider effort to increase Moscow’s support for the rebel region.

Medvedev’s message was underlined by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said Russia saw no need for foreign mediation.

Source: The New Nation

Leaders of ex-Soviet alliance meet

Russia’s new president met Friday with leaders of a fractious alliance of ex-Soviet republics, warning Ukraine and Georgia not to lead their countries into NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

President Dmitry Medvedev told the leaders of the two nations that joining the Western alliance would hurt their relations with Russia and seriously increase tension on the edges of the former Soviet Union, according to Lavrov.

Medvedev delivered his message during one-on-one talks with several presidents from the 12-nation Commonwealth of Independent States at the lavish Konstantin Palace in Strelna, on the Gulf of Finland near St. Petersburg, before what was billed as an informal summit meeting later in the day.

The first major CIS gathering for Medvedev since he took over from Vladimir Putin a month ago was being held amid increasing tensions between Moscow and both Ukraine and Georgia, whose leaders are trying to shed Russia’s influence and bring their nations closer to Europe and the United States.

To U.S.-allied Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, Medvedev reiterated Russia’s opposition to joining NATO, Lavrov told reporters. “The somewhat artificial inclusion of Georgia into NATO will lead to a spiral of very, very negative confrontation,” he said.

In his session with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, the Russian leader suggested that Ukrainian membership in NATO would violate a 1997 friendship treaty between the Slavic neighbors, Lavrov said. He said the treaty stipulates that neither nation should pose a security threat to the other.

“One-sided steps taken despite the essence of the agreement do not add stability to our relations,” Lavrov said. Russia’s parliament adopted a declaration this week urging the government to declare the friendship treaty invalid if Ukraine takes further steps toward joining NATO.

Lavrov indicated that Medvedev had criticized Yushchenko over his suggestions that Ukraine would evict the Russian navy from the Black Sea port of Sevastopol when the lease runs out in 2017. Kiev’s actions “are not what we would like to see from close partners,” Lavrov said.

In response to Saakashvili’s push to bring his small Caucasus Mountain into NATO, Russia has stepped up support for Georgia’s separatist region of Abkhazia, drawing Georgian claims that Russia is moving toward annexing the province. Both nations claim the other is preparing for the use of force in the region, creating fears that conflict could erupt.

In brief remarks before closed-door talks with Medvedev, Saakashvili said of Russia and Georgia: “I don’t think there are any insoluble problems, but there are many that are unsolved.”

Medvedev also said he believes their disputes can be resolved and that they can do it without outside help — an apparent reference to Western criticism of Russia’s actions.

Russia has far warmer relations with other ex-Soviet republics — some of whose leaders are authoritarian strongmen deeply disliked by the West — though ties are complicated by jockeying for position over energy supplies and export routes.

Medvedev’s first foreign destination as president was Kazakhstan. After the president met Friday with the leaders of the energy-rich Caspian Sea coast nations of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, Kremlin aide Sergei Prikhodko said Medvedev would visit both countries in early July.
Source: AP

All Zimbabwe opposition rallies banned

Just three weeks before Zimbabwe’s presidential runoff, Robert Mugabe is giving the opposition little room to campaign — detaining its candidate, banning rallies and attacking diplomats who try to investigate political violence.

Even food is being used as a weapon, American and British officials said, with a ban on aid agencies ensuring that the poorest Zimbabweans must turn to Mugabe for help even if they blame him for the collapse of the economy. The government denied the allegations.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai out-polled Mugabe and two other candidates in the first round of voting March 29, but did not get the simple majority necessary to avoid a runoff. In recent days, it has become increasingly clear that Mugabe does not plan to let Tsvangirai come close to toppling him in the June 27 runoff.

Tsvangirai tried to campaign around Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, on Friday, but he was stopped at two roadblocks. At the second, he was ordered to go to a police station about 30 miles from Bulawayo.

About two hours later, he and reporters with him were allowed to leave the station. They drove back to Bulawayo under police escort.

His spokesman, George Sibotshiwe, said Tsvangirai was questioned by police for 25 minutes and was told that all party rallies in Zimbabwe had been banned indefinitely.

“We are dismayed that our president has not been allowed to access the Zimbabwean people at a crucial stage in this campaign,” Sibotshiwe said.

Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change said police had banned its rallies out of concern for the safety of Tsvangirai and other party leaders. Sibotshiwe called the justification “nonsense,” and said the ban was “a clear indication that the regime will do everything necessary to remain in power.”

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said in an interview with The Associated Press that “people are free to campaign as they choose,” but he said Tsvangirai had consistently broken the law by failing to notify police of his rallies.

“For now, we are just warning him,” Bvudzijena said, “but sooner or later he might end up being arrested.”

Tsvangirai left the country soon after the first round of voting, and his party has said he was the target of a military assassination plot. He has survived at least three previous attempts on his life. Tsvangirai returned to Zimbabwe in late May to campaign for the runoff.

The government-controlled media has focused on Mugabe and ZANU-PF, all but ignoring Tsvangirai’s campaign, raising the question of whether Zimbabweans in isolated rural areas even know the opposition leader has returned.

Tsvangirai’s party, blaming state agents, says at least 60 of its supporters have been killed in the past two months.

The latest setback for Tsvangirai came as U.N. aid agencies said they were deeply concerned that Zimbabwe has ordered aid groups to halt operations. Millions of Zimbabweans depend on international groups for food, medicine and other aid as the economy crumbles. Without the private agencies, impoverished Zimbabweans will be dependent on the government and Mugabe’s party, both of which distribute food and other aid.

U.S. Ambassador James McGee said Zimbabwean authorities were now supplying food mostly to Mugabe supporters. In a videoconference to reporters in Washington from Harare, McGee said the U.S. Embassy has evidence that the government is offering food to opposition members only if they turn in identification that would allow them to vote.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack referred to the tactics that McGee described as “a vicious attempt to use food as a political weapon.”

At the United Nations, Zimbabwe Ambassador Boniface Chidyauskiku denied those charges.

“There is no use of food as a political weapon. It is the other way around. It is the relief agencies, followed by the U.S. government, that have been using food as a political weapon,” Chidyauskiku told the AP.

“They have gone out into the countryside and they have been telling Zimbabweans that if you don’t vote for the opposition, if you don’t change your vote, there’s no food for you,” he said. “So it is the United States using food as a political weapon to effect a regime change in Zimbabwe. This is why we have suspended the activity.”

On Thursday, aid groups in Zimbabwe were sent a memorandum from social welfare minister Nicholas Goche ordering an indefinite suspension of field work.

Aid deliveries to more than 4 million people in the country will be severely hampered by the decision, said Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. More than half of Zimbabwe’s population lives on less than $1 a day and life expectancy is only 35 years, according to the U.N.

U.N. agencies generally carry out their operations in the country with the help of other aid groups, Byrs said.

“These restrictions are also coming at a time when food security in Zimbabwe is deteriorating, leaving an increasing number of people vulnerable,” she said.

Poor rain recently has increased the risk of drought, and farmers lack seeds, Byrs said.

Goche’s memorandum to the United Nations and other aid groups did not mention government claims that aid was distributed to favored recipients or opposition supporters, or that civic and human rights groups registered as voluntary organizations were campaigning against Mugabe.

Earlier this week, the aid organization CARE International said it had been ordered to halt operations pending an investigation of allegations it was campaigning for the opposition. CARE denies the allegation.

Byrs said the suspension of CARE’s activities alone would immediately affect half a million Zimbabweans.

On Thursday, a group of often violent Mugabe loyalists waylaid a convoy of U.S. and British diplomats investigating political violence, beating a local staffer, slashing tires and threatening to burn the envoys, the U.S. Embassy said.

Mugabe frequently accuses Britain and the United States of plotting to topple him and return Zimbabwe to colonial rule.

Mugabe has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 and was once hailed as a liberator who promoted racial reconciliation and economic empowerment.

But he has been accused of clinging to power through election fraud and intimidation, and of destroying his country’s economy through the seizure of white-owned farms.

Carolyn Norris, an Africa specialist at Human Rights Watch, called the move against aid groups part of an “extreme campaign of violence and torture” for people who voted for Tsvangirai’s party.

“We don’t know if this will convince people to vote” for Mugabe, Norris said, adding Zimbabwe’s population “seems determined to vote how it wants to.”

Tsvangirai also said he expected Mugabe’s crackdown to backfire, saying Thursday: “If Mugabe did not hear the voice in March, he’s going to hear a much louder voice that people no longer enjoy their confidence in this government.”

Source: AP

Obama meets privately with Hillary Clinton

Barack Obama met privately with Hillary Rodham Clinton, a likely vice presidential candidate, as the Democratic nominee-in-waiting sought to unite his fractured party against Republican John McCain in November.

One of her top supporters, fellow New York senator Charles Schumer, said Friday that Clinton would accept the No. 2 spot.

“She has said if Senator Obama should want her to be vice president and thinks it would be best for the ticket, she will serve, she will accept that. But on the other hand, if he chooses someone else she will work just as hard for the party in November,” Schumer, Clinton’s New York colleague in the Senate, told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Clinton and Obama met in Washington Thursday night, going to great lengths to keep the meeting secret from the media beforehand. Schumer said the meeting was not about the vice presidency.

Robert Gibbs, an Obama spokesman, said the meeting was to talk about uniting the Democratic Party.

“Senator Obama and Senator Clinton did have occasion to meet this evening,” Gibbs said late Thursday. “It’s the end of the primary process. They wanted to talk about bringing these campaigns together in unity.”

Clinton has organized an event for Saturday in Washington, where she has told supporters she will formally end her campaign and back Obama for president.

Gibbs would not say where the former rivals met, except that it was not at Clinton’s home in Washington, as had been widely reported. CNN reported Friday that the meeting was at California Sen. Diane Feinstein’s home.

Reporters traveling with Obama sensed something might be happening between the pair when they arrived at his campaign plane after an event in Northern Virginia and he was not aboard.

Asked at the time about the Illinois senator’s whereabouts, Gibbs smiled and declined to comment.

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said the former first lady isn’t waging a campaign for No. 2.

“She is not seeking the vice presidency, and no one speaks for her but her,” Wolfson said Thursday. “The choice here is Senator Obama’s and his alone.”

Obama on Tuesday night earned the 2,118 delegates he needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

Source: Internet

Hamas welcomes “new spirit” from Abbas

The leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip welcomed on Thursday what he called a “new spirit” of dialogue from the Palestinian president but it was unclear how far the rival factions were moving to end a year-old schism.

Aides to President Mahmoud Abbas strongly rejected suggestions that Abbas had employed any warmer tone toward his Islamist opponents in Gaza during a keynote speech on Wednesday.

That view was echoed in Washington after Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, spoke by telephone with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who opposes contact with Hamas unless it drops its hostility to Israel and ends attacks on the Jewish state.

The flurry of debate on relations between Hamas and Abbas’s secular Fatah movement coincided with Palestinian commemorations of the Israeli capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 and the first anniversary of the outbreak of fighting that saw the Islamists rout Fatah forces in Gaza and take control there.

The schism has hampered Abbas in efforts to negotiate for a Palestinian state in U.S.-sponsored talks with Israel although it also brought an end to Western sanctions on the Fatah-run West Bank after Abbas fired the elected Hamas-led government.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, whom Abbas dismissed as prime minister a year ago, said: “We welcome President Abu Mazen’s call for a national and comprehensive dialogue and view positively to the new spirit that appeared in the speech.

“Our hands are outstretched to the brothers in the homeland … We confirm our readiness to make dialogue succeed as quickly as possible and to show the flexibility needed from all sides.”

Aides to Abbas, who on Wednesday had called for “a national and comprehensive dialogue” with Hamas, were quick to insist the president wanted only discussion on the implementation of a recent Yemeni diplomatic initiative which called for Hamas to give up its hold on Gaza — not a debate on mutual concessions.

“President Abbas’ position has not changed,” Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said. “It is wrong to say that Abbas no longer calls for ending Hamas’ coup to end the divisions.”

However, after Haniyeh’s speech, senior Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad said: “We welcome any positive approach and we hope that Haniyeh’s readiness will translate into practical moves.”

But he made clear Abbas brooked no rivals: “The dialogue must be on the basis of one authority, one gun, one law.”

TALKS WITH ISRAEL

Some analysts saw Abbas’s forceful renewal of a call for Arab states to mediate an end to the split between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank as part of strategy to bolster his position at home in the face of mounting skepticism over the prospects of reaching a deal this year on establishing a Palestinian state in U.S.-sponsored talks with Israel.

Reminding Israel and its U.S. and European allies that he has the option of again embracing their enemies in Hamas if talks fail, may offer Abbas some negotiating leverage.

One senior Israeli official said Israel believed the talk from Ramallah was meant to increase pressure on Israel and the United States to salvage a peace process that is threatened by a corruption scandal facing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and by Palestinian complaints over Israeli settlements.

Echoing comments from Fatah officials, Haniyeh noted the success of Arab mediators in brokering a deal last month among rival factions in Lebanon and expressed hope a similar approach could succeeding in healing Palestinian rifts.

“We are ready to have this dialogue in any Arab country on the basis of no loser and no winner in the hope of an agreement that would make the Palestinian people the victors,” he said.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack commenting on Rice’s call to Abbas, played down suggestions that Abbas had softened his opposition to dialogue with Hamas, saying that the Yemeni plan called for contacts conditional on Hamas accepting Fatah leadership and previous Fatah agreements with Israel.

“His conditions for any discussion with Hamas have not changed,” McCormack said. “We don’t detect any movement at all.”

U.S. President George W. Bush hopes Israel and Abbas can strike a deal on a Palestinian state before he leaves the White House in January. But Israel has warned it could review its ties with Abbas if he were to mend relations with Hamas.

After Hamas won a parliamentary election in 2006, Israel, the United States and European Union imposed sanctions that were lifted only when Abbas dismissed Haniyeh’s government last June.

Yemen tried to broker a deal between Fatah and Hamas in March but efforts broke down after disagreement over whether Hamas should cede control of Gaza before formal talks started.

Arab ministers have said Hamas must cede control of Gaza and have backed the Yemeni proposal. Erekat said Abbas would travel to Arab states to ask them to help implement that proposal.

A Hamas spokesman said Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa called Haniyeh and “praised the new spirit that dominates the Palestinian situation.” Moussa also called Abbas, he said.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; editing by Sami Aboudi)

Source: Internet