Hamas: The fourth dialog round made slight progress and will resume next month

[ 29/04/2009 - 10:55 AM ]

CAIRO, (PIC)--

The Hamas Movement stated Tuesday that the fourth round of the national dialog in Cairo achieved slight, but insufficient, progress adding that the meetings with Fat'h delegation were adjourned and would resume next month in a fifth round.

Ezzat Al-Resheq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said that Hamas is not satisfied with the results of this round of the national dialog in Cairo and it hopes to achieve more than that, pointing out that the dialog is complicated and needs more perseverance and creative solutions.

Resheq underscored that the Hamas delegation showed a fair share of flexibility and made great strides to achieve reconciliation, adding that the Movement expressed willingness to eliminate the obstacles in the PLO file in order to reach an agreement regarding it.

For his part, Dr. Ismail Radwan said that the current round of reconciliation talks in Cairo ended with a joint meeting between delegations of Hamas and Fat'h in the presence of Egyptian intelligence director Omar Sulaiman and it was agreed upon to resume the talks on May 16.

Dr. Radwan underlined that the two parties agreed on the importance of the one package solution either with respect to the referential authority, security, the government or elections.

The Hamas official also pointed out that the two parties agreed on the necessity of the PLC's work, and the respect of the majority within the council and the mechanism of proxies it approved.

In the same context, Palestinian informed sources told the PIC on Tuesday that during a closed meeting attended by Sulaiman, the delegations of Hamas and Fatah agreed on the formation of an interim referential national authority to oversee the rebuilding of the PLO composed of factions, independents and the executive committee.

The sources affirmed that the two parties also agreed on the mixed electoral system, but the issue of percentages still constitutes a contentious point, where Fat'h demands a rise in the percentage of the proportional representation at the expense of electoral districts, and Hamas demands a slight rise in this percentage.

In another related context, Egyptian writer and specialist in Palestinian affairs Ibrahim Al-Dirawi said, in a statement to the Quds Press on Tuesday, that the Palestinian national dialog is in a very critical stage, adding that the dialog atmosphere is not encouraging after ex-PA chief Mahmoud Abbas demanded that any future government should abide by the previous PLO-Israeli agreements.

Dirawi noted that Abbas's remarks blocked the whole dialog process and made things return to point zero.

In a joint statement issued Tuesday during their meeting, the alliance of Palestinian forces, which are composed of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Sa'iqa, the popular front-general command, the popular struggle, the Palestinian liberation front, Fat'h-Intifada and the communist party, rejected all calls for the recognition of the Israeli occupation and the international quartet's terms, or the commitment to the agreements signed with Israel.

The statement stressed that the success of the national dialog is dependent alone on the adherence to the Palestinian constants and rights, and the commitment to the option of resistance to confront the Zionist schemes.