SYRIA: Syria trying to mediate Abbas-Meshaal meeting.

Record ID: 279585

  • Title: SYRIA: Syria trying to mediate Abbas-Meshaal meeting.
  • Date: 21st January 2007
  • Summary: MEDIA WIDE OF PRESS CONFERENCE NEWS BRIEFING (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) SENIOR PALESTINIAN NEGOTIATOR SAEB EREKAT SAYING: "The meeting between Abu Mazen (Abbas) and Abu al-Waleed (Meshaal) will take place tonight." (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) SENIOR PALESTINIAN NEGOTIATOR SAEB EREKAT SAYING: "(Syrian) President (Bashar) al-Assad showed his readiness to help us in doing anything that
  • Embargoed: 5th February 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAA3IDEN0DFX8KEVKHLDSNB1CC2
  • Story Text: Syria is trying to ensure a meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal takes place in Damascus. Syrian Vice-President Farouq al-Shara held separate talks with Abbas and Meshaal on Sunday morning and senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Abbas and Meshaal would meet on Sunday night.

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal will meet in Damascus on Sunday (January 21) to try to ease the Palestinian political crisis.
    "The meeting between Abu Mazen (Abbas) and Abu al-Waleed (Meshaal) will take place tonight," senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters after Abbas met Syrian Vice-President Farouq al-Shara. "Our message is forbidding infighting, stopping instigation and the formation of a national unity government."
    The Syrian Vice-President held separate talks with Abbas and Meshaal on Sunday in a last ditch effort to get the two men to meet. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem attended the meetings.
    Izzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas official, told Reuters the group does not expect the meeting to result in an agreement on a unity government.
    An initial meeting scheduled for late on Saturday (January 20) was postponed after officials failed to reconcile differences over the new government and how it would deal with Western demands.
    A power struggle between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah faction has led to violence in Gaza and the West Bank after talks on forming a unity government broke down late last year and Abbas called for fresh elections.
    Hamas officials said on Saturday the two politicians would discuss whom to appoint to the ministries of the interior, finance and foreign affairs in a proposed unity government. They also said talks between Abbas aides and Hamas officials in the past few days had reached an understanding that Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas would lead the next government.
    A senior Palestinian official in Gaza said on Sunday that Hamas had agreed to give up the interior ministry to an independent personality, and that the finance ministry would go to Salam Fayyad, an independent.
    Abbas arrived in Damascus on Saturday and met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has close ties with Meshaal and allows the Hamas exiled leadership to live in Syria.
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