Cheney says Hamas-Fatah deal unlikely

Enlarge Photo Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (R) stands with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during their...

Tue, Mar 25 12:40 AM

By Ari Rabinovitch

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Monday he did not believe Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would agree to reconcile with Hamas until the Islamist group gave up control of the Gaza Strip.

Cheney ended a three-day visit to Jerusalem and the West Bank on Monday aimed at bolstering Israel-Palestinian peace talks, which Washington hopes will lead to a deal on Palestinian statehood by January 2009.

His comments came a day after Fatah, led by the Western-backed Abbas, and its rival Hamas, which opposes peace talks with Israel, issued a declaration agreeing to resume dialogue under a Yemeni fence-mending initiative.

"My conclusion from talking with the Palestinian leadership is that they have established preconditions which would have to be fulfilled before they would ever agree to a reconciliation, including a complete reversal of the Hamas takeover of Gaza," Cheney told reporters.

After meeting Cheney on Sunday, Abbas said Israeli settlement expansion, roadblocks in the West Bank and assaults against militants were holding up peace talks relaunched at a U.S.-led conference in Annapolis, Maryland, last November.

Israel is under increasing U.S. pressure to take steps to ease restrictions on Palestinian travel and trade. But Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday that while Israel would try to ease some travel restrictions within the West Bank, it was not ready to commit to removing checkpoints.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to use a visit to the region later this week to encourage both sides to keep their commitments under a 2003 "road map" peace plan.

"I think it's fair to say that we are still in the process of getting each side to focus on what they need to do, and get out of the mode of pointing the finger at the other guy," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.

"PALESTINIAN SITUATION"

The Yemeni initiative calls for the "Palestinian situation" to return to the way it was before June, when Hamas Islamists wrested control of the territory of 1.5 million people from the more secular Fatah in fighting in June. Abbas dismissed a Hamas-led unity government after the Gaza takeover.

The West Bank-based Palestinian leadership made clear in a statement after the declaration in Sanaa was issued that it continued to demand, as part of any renewed dialogue with Hamas, that its rival give up control of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas rejected that position, saying articles of the Yemeni plan were up for negotiation.

Referring to the Gaza Strip, Cheney said: "It is clearly a difficult situation, in part because I think it's true that there is evidence that Hamas is supported by Iran and Syria and they are doing everything they can to torpedo the peace process." He did not elaborate.

Some Hamas militants have trained in Iran and its top leader, Khaled Meshaal, is based in Syria.

Violence along Israel's frontier with the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, including Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli raids, has threatened to derail peace talks. On Monday, Israeli troops killed an unarmed Palestinian during a clash with gunmen on the border, hospital officials said.

Israel has been searching for a technology that could combat the rocket fire from Gaza, which cause relatively few casualties but have paralysed southern Israeli border towns.

However a senior defence official said on Monday Israel would not buy a U.S.-produced anti-rocket laser called Nautilus because of the device's poor performance in field tests.

Israeli state arms firm Rafael is developing Iron Dome, which is designed to shoot down rockets fired from Gaza with miniature missiles, but that system is not expected to be operational before 2010.

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