Abbas to urge Hamas to accept early elections
Middle East Desk Report

RAMALLAH—Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected on Monday to urge Hamas Islamists to agree to early elections, cede control of the Gaza Strip and hold talks with his Fatah faction, a Palestinian official said.
The official said Abbas was expected to revive the possibility of early Palestinian elections in a speech later on Monday to mark the anniversary of the founding of Fatah.
Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June, prompting Abbas to sack a Hamas-led unity government and appoint a Fatah-backed administration in the West Bank. The rift helped pave the way for U.S.-backed talks with Israel.
Abbas said after Hamas’s Gaza takeover he wanted to call early elections, but has not set a date. It has been several months since he last talked publicly about holding a ballot.
Hamas, which won a Palestinian parliamentary vote in 2006, opposes early elections, saying they are unconstitutional. Elections are not due until 2010.
Abbas is expected to say on Monday that any election should be held in agreement with Hamas, and to reiterate a call for Hamas to give up control of Gaza so it can hold reconciliation talks with Fatah, the official said.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum repeated that the Islamist group was ready for dialogue with Fatah but would not accept Abbas’s demand it first give up control of the coastal enclave. “Abbas is betting on the American-Zionist project and not on dialogue with Hamas,” Barhoum told a news conference in Gaza. “We renew our readiness and willingness to restore dialogue with Fatah without conditions.”
Abbas launched peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at a U.S.-hosted peace conference last month and agreed to aim for a deal on Palestinian statehood by the end of 2008.
The talks have been marred by friction over Israeli plans to build homes on occupied land, and Hamas’s control of Gaza could also complicate any deal. Abbas is expected to say on Monday that creating a Palestinian state will be impossible without a halt to settlement activity.
Hamas has shunned Abbas’s peace drive, refusing to renounce violence and recognize Israel. The Jewish state has warned Abbas that any dialogue with Hamas could torpedo the peace process.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Monday that he was ready to “open a new page” with Hamas if the Islamist movement gave up its control of the Gaza Strip.
“I call on those who carried out the putsch... to open a new page,” Abbas told a gathering of Fatah officials who gathered to mark 43 years since the secular party first declared itself an armed Palestinian resistance movement. “No party should supplant another,” he said. “The putsch and the military edge should not be a part of our vocabulary. Only dialogue should prevail.”
However he reiterated that no talks with Hamas can take place unless the Islamists give up the power they seized in Gaza in mid-June by routing pro-Fatah forces after a week of deadly street battles.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has barred new construction work, building planning and occupancy tenders at West Bank settlements without his approval, documents show.
The move is meant to bolster U.S.-backed peace talks, soured by disputes over Jewish settlement construction, ahead of a visit by President George W. Bush early next month.
In a December 30 letter to the ministers of defense, housing and agriculture, Olmert wrote that “construction, new building, expansion, preparation of plans, publication of residency tenders, confiscation of land stemming from other settlement activities in the (West Bank) area will not go forward and will not be implemented without requesting and receiving in advance approval by the defense minister and the prime minister.”
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, does not rule out the prime minister approving construction within West Bank settlements.