CAIRO/GENEVA: A Hamas delegation met Egypt’s intelligence chief Omar Suleiman on Saturday to try to set a new date for the signing of a Palestinian unity deal, a member of the team said.
“We have met Gen. Omar Suleiman” but the results of the talks in Cairo will be announced later, Mohammed Nasr said.
However, another Hamas official, Ezzat Al-Rashq, told Al-Jazeera television that the movement could “not shake hands with (Palestinian leader Mahmoud) Abbas at this point in time” to seal an Egyptian-mediated deal.
He called first for an apology from Abbas over the Goldstone report on the Gaza war last December-January.
The Hamas team led by exiled senior political leader Mussa Abu Marzuk traveled to Cairo to request “a new, appropriate date for the new session of inter-Palestinian dialogue,” a Hamas spokesman in Gaza said earlier. “The atmosphere is not right for the signing of an accord,” he said.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, has asked Egypt to delay the signing of the deal which Cairo as mediator had announced for later this month, a source within the group said on Wednesday.
Egypt had announced at the start of the week that Hamas and the mainstream Fatah party of Abbas would travel to Cairo to sign the long-delayed reconciliation deal on Oct. 25-26.
The postponement was requested because of the controversial decision by the Palestinian delegation at the UN Human Rights Council to drop its backing for an immediate vote on a damning report on the Gaza war, the Hamas source said.
The UN report, authored by South African judge Richard Goldstone, accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the 22-day war that killed 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
Hamas has been at the forefront of criticism leveled at Abbas over the delay on the Goldstone report, saying the move “betrayed” the Palestinian victims of the offensive.
The president, who has also faced a storm of criticism across the Arab world, has since sought to backtrack, saying he welcomed a move by Libya to hold an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the report.
Palestinian diplomats in Geneva said on Friday they were pushing to bring forward the UN Human Rights Council debate. Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said the request for an urgent meeting was prompted by violence this week in Jerusalem that he blamed on Israel and which he also wants discussed.
The head of the Organization of The Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, said earlier Friday that his group would support Palestinian efforts to raise the report in the Geneva-based council that originally commissioned it.
