Haniyeh says elections would lead to unrest

TEHRAN—Early Palestinian elections will lead to unrest, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Sunday after accusing President Mahmoud Abbas of trying to force his Hamas movement out of all government positions.
Aides to Abbas said on Saturday he planned to call early elections, seeing little point in further talks on a government to replace a Hamas-led coalition boycotted by the West. Haniyeh, on an official visit to Iran, a major backer of Hamas, said early elections would lead to violence. “The proposal ... about holding early elections is the start of the creation of disorder in Palestine,” Haniyeh said at a news conference with local media. “We studied that proposal and we believe it to be contrary to the legitimacy of the Palestinian government,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
Haniyeh told Iranian state television late on Saturday that Abbas was to blame for the breakdown in unity government talks. “Unfortunately, the talks did not succeed because of the hostility and stubbornness of the brothers that are in the Palestinian leadership,” he said.
“They want the entire state and government to be entirely in the hands of non-Hamas people,” he said. His comments in Arabic were translated into Farsi by Iranian television. Hamas defeated Abbas’s Fatah in January in elections to the Palestinian parliament, and formed a government in March.
It has refused to bow to Western demands that it recognize the state of Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace accords with the Jewish state. Haniyeh said pressure from Abbas to accept the Western conditions made Hamas realize that “they do not want the formation of a national unity government; they want to expel Hamas from the government.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all state matters, told Haniyeh he was right not to bow to pressure to recognize Israel and renounce armed struggle.
“The Palestinian nation and government will definitely be victorious with such a spirit, of that there is no doubt,” state television quoted Khamenei as saying. Iran, like Hamas, refuses to recognize Israel and has given the Hamas-led government $120 million this year to help make up a shortfall caused by the Western aid blockade.—Agencies