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Arafat rejects efforts to renew dialogue with HAMAS

GAZA CITY: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has ruled out any immediate renewal of a dialogue between his self-rule authority and HAMAS after the radical group refused to end its armed attacks on Israel, his aides said Sunday.

Tayeb Abdel-Rahim, secretary-general of the Palestinian Authority, said Arafat told his cabinet on Friday that Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS) remained committed to undermining his autonomy government and could not be trusted to control its armed wing, Ezzedin al-Qassam.

"President Arafat told the cabinet that HAMAS has tried many times to conduct a coup against Palestinian legitimacy after receiving orders from outside (the territories)," Abdel-Rahim told AFP.

"Arafat said that the most important dialogue today is among PLO factions and we are not planning any dialogue with others," he said.

Arafat was responding to plans by several Palestinian activists from the territories to meet HAMAS officials in Jordan to discuss reconciliation between the movement and the self-rule authority which launched a crackdown against Islamic militants following a spate of suicide bombings in Israel.

"News reports about a dialogue with HAMAS and Islamic Jihad are not true," Abdel-Rahim said. "We are not sending any delegation and we're not planning to send any delegation to Amman for talks with HAMAS," he said.

The mediation effort was launched by several Palestinian activists, including Imad Faluji, a former HAMAS leader who was elected to the Palestinian self-rule council and has frequently mediated between the two sides in the past.

A member of the delegation that was to meet HAMAS leaders in Amman told AFP Sunday that the group was still awaiting travel authorization from Israel and Jordan.

"We might go tomorrow, or the next day or next week," he said on condition of anonymity, denying reports that the trip had been cancelled after Arafat's comments.

Since four suicide bombings by HAMAS and the smaller Islamic Jihad killed 62 people in February and March, the Palestinian Authority has arrested more than 700 Islamic militants, including several top HAMAS leaders, and clamped down on HAMAS social organizations in the territories.

The armed wing of HAMAS, Ezzedin al-Qassam, said in a leaflet at the weekend that it would hold talks with Arafat only if he ends the clampdown, releases all HAMAS detainees and publicly apologizes "for all these terrorist measures and ugly crimes against the Islamic movement."

It also demanded that "all those responsible for torturing heroes of HAMAS and Ezzedin al-Qassam in authority jails" to be put on trial.

Last week the group warned that it would carry out new suicide attacks against Israel in revenge for the Palestinian Authority crackdown.

Abdel-Rahim said the authority would hold talks with groups only on condition that they "renounce violence and recognize the Palestinian Authority as the only legitimate authority in the homeland."

He also accused "some Arab countries" of "pushing HAMAS to undermine the Palestinian Authority."-APP