Gaza, July 19: Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah on Sunday decided to postpone talks on forming a “national unity” government until August 25, a Palestinian official said.
The senior official, speaking to the German Press Agency dpa on condition of anonymity, said the rivals and Egyptian mediators agreed to postpone the talks until after Fatah’s general assembly on August 4.
Delegates from Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, which controls Palestinian-administered areas of the West Bank, had been scheduled to reconvene in Cairo for a seventh round of reconciliation talks on July 25.
But recent tensions within Fatah had raised questions about the timing of the talks.
The party has been at odds since Faruq al-Qaddumi, a senior member of both Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), released a transcript Wednesday purportedly showing Abbas in a meeting with former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon during which an assassination plot against former PLO leader Yasser Arafat was discussed.
In the run-up to last week’s Non-Aligned Movement summit in the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, Palestinian officials told dpa that Abbas would ask Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak to postpone the latest round of talks to accommodate Fatah’s preparations for its general assembly.
Negotiators failed to reach an agreement for the sixth time at the end of June, as leaders of each side accused the other of continuing to arrest their supporters in the territories they control.
Most international donors who have pledged billions of dollars in aid to rebuild the Gaza Strip and revitalize the Palestinian economy, have stipulated that none of the money may fall into the hands of Hamas, which the United States and the European Union list as a terrorist organization.
Moreover, without a Palestinian government, it is unclear who would represent the Palestinians in Arab-Israeli peace talks. European and US political leaders have in recent months made a series of high-profile bids to restart those negotiations.
——Agencies