TUNIS/JERUSLEM, 17 November 2005 — Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met twice on the sidelines of a technology summit yesterday, boosting contacts a day after a US-brokered deal to open the Gaza Strip borders.

The talks between the two, attending the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, marked the highest-level contact between Israel and the Palestinians in months.

Shalom and Abbas first held what an Israeli official described as an unscheduled meeting on the sidelines of the conference before convening later in the day along with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a second session.

“It was a good meeting,” Abbas told reporters, speaking about the first round of talks. “I reminded him that this (Gaza deal) was the first agreement signed in five years and that now we should really close that gap and not only implement what has been signed but sign new agreements,” he said.

In rare progress in Middle East diplomacy, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brokered a deal on Tuesday to open Gaza’s border to Egypt and for passage arrangements for Palestinians between the coastal territory and the occupied West Bank.

The European Union has pledged to help prevent arms reaching Gaza, which Israel quit in September after 38 years’ occupation. “It (border crossing arrangement) should be made with full security that will be promised to the Israelis and to the tourists that are coming to Israel,” Shalom said.

A planned summit between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has stalled over renewed violence.

At their first meeting of the day, Shalom reaffirmed to Abbas that Israel opposed the participation of Hamas in a Palestinian parliamentary election due in January, the Israeli official said. Shalom’s preliminary talks with Abbas were attended by Mauritanian President Ely Ould Mohamed Vall.

Meanwhile, pressure mounted on Sharon yesterday to call springtime elections as his foreign minister Shalom became the first senior member of his party to publicly back polls in March.

The political establishment has been gripped by talk of early elections for months. Sharon’s Likud party has been flung into crisis over his pullout from the Gaza Strip and his fragile governing coalition increasingly teetering.

Last week polls as early as March — eight months before the government’s mandate ends — became an increasing possibility when trade union boss Amir Peretz ousted Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres as leader of the Labor party.