GAZA CITY, 29 November 2004 — Palestine Liberation Organization chief Mahmoud Abbas won the endorsement of one of the main Palestinian armed factions yesterday before pledging to stop anyone but the official security forces from carrying weapons.

Abbas also obtained UN and Egyptian support for January’s landmark election.

Abbas, accompanied by Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei and interim Palestinian Authority President Rauhi Fattuh, had separate talks in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon meanwhile looked set to end his 15-month-old boycott of the Palestinian leadership after expressing a willingness to hold talks with new PLO chief Abbas whenever he wanted.

Abbas is the overwhelming favorite to win the Jan. 9 election to succeed the late Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority president after being nominated by the dominant Fatah faction.

But his previous spell as prime minister was marred by his failure to persuade armed groups such as Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Fatah offshoot, from laying down their weapons and ending their armed struggle against Israel.

In a significant boost to his campaign, Abbas won the endorsement yesterday of the Brigades. “We announce our commitment and complete support to our brother Abu Mazen (Abbas) who we believe will implement the will of the Palestinian people,” the Brigades said in a statement. The endorsement came after a decision on Friday night by West Bank Fatah chief Marwan Barghouti, the man accused by Israel of being the Brigades’ leader, not to run for the post.

While the charismatic Barghouti is seen as the inspiration behind the four-year-old Palestinian uprising, Abbas has upset many hard-liners by his opposition to the militarization of the intifada.

Just hours after Al-Aqsa’s endorsement, Abbas promptly put himself on a potential collision course with the armed groups by insisting that only members of the Palestinian security forces should be allowed to carry weapons.

“We want to control the Palestinian security scene so that we end the phenomenon of arms being carried around everywhere. This is the policy of the Palestinian government,” he said after meeting President Hosni Mubarak.

“We want a single authority, a single government and a single legitimate Palestinian armed force on the Palestinian scene,” Abbas told reporters.

Prime Minister Qorei told the same news conference the anti-Israeli “resistance will continue as long as the occupation exists” but added that the “work of the resistance is determined by the Palestinian leadership”.

The more moderate tone of the post-Arafat Palestinian leadership is music to the ears of Sharon who not only boycotted Arafat but has also refused to meet any Palestinian official since an August 2003 bombing in Jerusalem.

In a sign of a growing rapprochement, Sharon told Newsweek magazine that “when they (the Palestinian leadership) would like to meet, we will meet”.

Abbas was also prepared to meet Sharon. “He is there and we must meet him,” he said. An early chance for an exchange of views is likely to come this week when Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Palestinian counterpart Nabil Shaath both attend a conference in The Hague.

Shaath said that he would use the gathering of European and Middle Eastern foreign ministers to “ask for help in the elections and to put pressure on Israel to lift the closures in our cities, villages and camps.”

— Additional input from agencies