RAMALLAH: Egypt decided yesterday to delay Palestinian reconciliation talks it planned to host next week after Hamas decided to boycott the meeting.
The talks, scheduled for tomorrow, were intended to end Hamas’ conflict with the rival Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas.
Hamas blamed Abbas for failing to free jailed members and sympathizers of the popular Palestinian organization. Abbas said his forces only held criminals and not political prisoners.
“Egypt decided to delay the Palestinian reconciliation talks,” Reuters quoted an Egyptian source as saying.
Postponement of the talks coincided with a statement by Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal that his group is ready to talk to Barack Obama as long as the US president-elect respects Hamas’ rights and options.
“We are ready for dialogue with President Obama and with the new American administration with an open mind, on the basis that the American administration respects our rights and our options,” Meshaal said in an interview with Sky News from the Syrian capital Damascus.
A statement published by Egypt’s MENA news agency said the Hamas-Fatah talks would be postponed “until the necessary and proper conditions are achieved to secure its success.”
Egypt had invited Hamas and Fatah and smaller Palestinian factions to talks to try to heal a rivalry that burst into open conflict last year.
Palestinian sources in Damascus and Hamas officials in Egypt said Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Al-Saeqa — groups opposed to Abbas — would boycott the planned Cairo talks.
“These groups, along with Hamas, do not want to go to Cairo and sit among Arab foreign ministers, who will try to pressure them into signing a pro-Abbas formula,” a Palestinian source in Syria told Reuters.
Hamas officials in Cairo said the group objected to sitting down with Fatah if Abbas failed to free some 400 Hamas members and sympathizers he had jailed.
Salah Al-Bardaweel, a Hamas legislator, said: “Going to Cairo for the reconciliation talks is useless and meaningless. Egypt is convinced and believes Abbas’ account that there are no political prisoners in West Bank ... This has reduced any possibility of going ahead with the talks.”
Abbas, who with Israeli and Western backing has beefed up forces in West Bank cities, has arrested several Palestinian fighters in what he calls a move to restore law and order.
Abbas told a news conference with visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday in the West Bank that his forces arrested only those who broke the law, regardless of their political affiliation.
Hamas official Ayman Taha said: “We told Egypt we would go to the dialogue if political prisoners were released ... if the prisoners were not released we would not come.”
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said from Gaza that Abbas “has placed the last nail in the coffin of the Palestinian dialogue and therefore the dialogue has become useless.”
In response, Fatah official Osama Al-Fara, a delegate to the Cairo talks, said: “Hamas’ absence will never serve the Palestinian people especially at a time when we need unity and an end to the divisions. It could inflict political and economic harm on the Palestinian people.”
Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said Hamas’ decision to boycott was backed by other countries in the region that aim to block Egypt’s reconciliation effort — hinting at Hamas supporters Syria and Iran.
— With input from agencies
