Solana arrives in Egypt for Gaza talks

Jan 26, 2009, 17:36 GMT

Cairo - EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived in Cairo on Monday night for talks with Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak scheduled for Tuesday morning.

Solana's visit to the region is 'part of the European Union's efforts to consolidate a lasting ceasefire, facilitate humanitarian relief for the victims in Gaza and re-launch the peace process,' Solana's office said in a statement.

Earlier on Monday, the European Commission announced that it was providing 58 million euros (74.3 million dollars) in humanitarian aid to vulnerable Palestinians this year, as EU foreign ministers met to discuss ways of helping Israel counter arms smuggling destined for Hamas into the Gaza Strip.

In a statement, EU Aid Commissioner Louis Michel said around 32 million euros would be earmarked for Gaza, which suffered massive damage during a three-week bombing campaign by Israel.

An additional 20 million euros are to go to the West Bank, with the remaining 6 million destined for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

To stop arms smuggling into Gaza, the EU offered on Monday to redeploy a monitoring team at the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, which was there between 2005 and 2007.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit claimed that if any arms smuggling was taking place through its territory, it was 'minimal.' Instead, most of the weapons reaching Hamas were arriving via the sea, the Egyptian diplomat said.

In Cairo, a senior member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction called on Hamas to stop targeting Fatah members in Gaza for the sake of national unity.

'Hamas should stop these practices. It is time to form a coalition government and stop having two Palestinian governments: one in Gaza and the other in the West Bank,' Azzam al-Ahmed, head of the Fatah bloc in the Palestine Liberation Organization, told reporters at a Cairo press conference.

Earlier on Monday, al-Ahmed accused Hamas of killing 28 Fatah fighters in Gaza over recent weeks 'out of fear they might take advantage of the Israeli attack on Gaza to attack Hamas institutions.'

Al-Ahmed's statements followed a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers on Sunday in which EU members expressed their support for the idea of a unified Palestinian government with Abbas as president.

Solana's two-day tour of the Middle East will include stops in Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and Israel.