Hamas agrees to truce

2005-02-13 09:03

Gaza City - The largest Palestinian militant group Hamas agreed on Saturday to maintain an informal truce but the leadership failed to secure its signature to a mutual ceasefire announced with Israel earlier in the week.

"Hamas is going to maintain its cooling down period," one of its leaders, Ismail Haniyah, told AFP after the talks with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, in which he took part.

Haniyah added that Abbas had confirmed Israel's agreement to a halt to military operations including targeted killings of militant leaders.

The Palestinian leader had been seeking Hamas's agreement to a mutual ceasefire with Israel which he announced at a breakthrough summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Egypt on Tuesday.

Abbas was reportedly furious when just two days after his talks in Egypt, Hamas rained mortar rounds and rockets on Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.

He immediately sacked three senior security officials for failing to prevent the violence.

In late January, Abbas deployed some 4 000 security personnel across Gaza with "firm instructions" to halt all militant operations.

Thursday's violence prompted Israel to suspend negotiations on implementing agreements reached at Tuesday's summit and underlined the scale of the challenge facing Abbas to rein in the militants.

"We are in a serious and dangerous time," powerful former security minister Mohammed Dahlan told reporters in Gaza City before the talks with Hamas, adding that the armed factions had "serious responsibility on their shoulders".

Dahlan held talks with Israeli defence minister Shaul Mofaz in Tel Aviv later Saturday to discuss security coordination, officials on both sides said.

Israel army radio said the talks would also focus on prisoner releases and the handover of security control for West Bank towns.

Deported Palestinians to go home

A similar meeting was due to take place on Sunday between Palestinian negotiations minister Saeb Erakat and top Sharon adviser Dov Weisglass. Israel had postponed the talks following Thursday's mortar attacks.

Erakat said that more than 60 Palestinians from the West Bank who were deported by Israel to the Gaza Strip or Europe would return home within two weeks.

"Israel has agreed to allow the return of all Palestinians deported to Gaza and Europe to return home," Erakat said, adding that the move had been agreed before Tuesday's landmark Middle East peace summit which took place in Egypt.

"They will return within two weeks," he said. A joint Israeli-Palestinian committee on the deportees would meet within two or three days to finalise details of the exiles' return home, he added.

Early on Saturday, Abbas met more than 30 West Bank residents who had been deported to Gaza by Israel, and reassured them that everything was being done to expedite their return home "as soon as possible", an aide said.

On Sunday, Abbas was due to meet the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, of which he is chair. He was also expected to convene militant leaders for talks.

- AFP