"Breakthrough" in Cairo Palestinian talks (Roundup)

Jun 29, 2009, 22:24 GMT

Gaza City/Cairo - Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas reached 'a breakthrough' in Egyptian-mediated talks in Cairo Monday night, a Fatah negotiator said.

Negotiators reached 'a clear breakthrough on the file of political prisoners and other outstanding issues' in their sixth round of talks aimed at forming a 'national unity' government, Fatah negotiator Azzam al-Ahmed told a news conference in Cairo.

Egypt had imposed a July 7 deadline on delegates from Fatah, which controls Palestinian-administered areas of the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, to either form a national unity government or accept an Egyptian compromise that would see a joint committee to oversee the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and organize elections for a new government.

'A comprehensive convention will be held in Cairo on July 5, where all Palestinian factions will join together to sign a reconciliation deal that will forever end the rift,' Al-Ahmed said in remarks carried by the Palestinian Wafa news agency.

Al-Ahmed said the rival factions had agreed on the broad outlines of a deal, Wafa reported.

'Tomorrow (Tuesday), we will work on the final forms. I hope that all the unresolved outstanding issues related to the election system, the joint security force and the joint factional committee will be finalized soon,' he said.

'We will keep working on closing the file of mutual political arrests in both Gaza and West Bank,' al-Ahmed said.

In the days before the speech, Hamas had made the release of its members in West Bank jails a condition for negotiations on other topics, and both sides on Monday accused the other of arresting more members.

On Monday, Palestinian security apparatus spokesman Adnan Dumiri announced that President Mahmoud Abbas had ordered the release of 100 Hamas members previously arrested in the West Bank.

In a separate development, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Monday accused the Islamic Hamas movement and its armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, of preparing to assassinate senior Palestinian officials in the West Bank before the July 7 deadline to undermine the talks. Plotters were arrested, PA Secretary-General Tayeb Abdel Rahim said.

According to a poll released Monday, less than one-third of Palestinians expected the rival factions to strike an agreement in this, their sixth, round of talks.

The Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre found that 52.1 per cent of 1,199 Palestinian respondents expected that the talks would fail, while 37 per cent expected talks to succeed.

The poll was carried out in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank between June 20 and 24.

But al-Ahmed seemed optimistic on Monday.

'I believe that an agreement may be within reach by (July 7),' he said. 'We are closer than ever to signing on time - unless new obstacles emerge in the future.'