Palestinian PM calls for calm

2004-11-07 07:52

Gaza City - Prime minister Ahmed Qorei urged leaders of armed factions not to drag the Palestinian people into internecine conflict as their veteran leader Yasser Arafat continued on Sunday to fight for his life in a Paris hospital.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), meanwhile, forged ahead with its own agenda, congratulating US President George W Bush on his re-election and expressing a desire to work with the man who has dismissed Arafat as a failure.

Information about the state of Arafat's health continued to trickle in, with the French armed forces' health department saying there had been no change in its assessment that Arafat was stable and his condition had not deteriorated.

Arafat has been in a coma since midweek at the Percy military hospital, on the southwestern outskirts of Paris, but his top aide told AFP in France that the 75-year-old was not beyond recovery.

With Arafat hovering between life and death, Palestinian officials and leaders of armed factions such as the Islamist group Hamas are keen to avoid his death becoming the trigger for an outbreak of violence.

Fears of violence in Gaza are particularly acute as the armed factions and the security forces have clashed on a number of occasions in recent months.

Qorei headed to the territory on Saturday for a meeting with the factions including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) where he hammered home the need for unity.

'Problem must be solved by dialogue'

"Taking up arms is not a solution," Qorei told a press conference after the meeting. "Any domestic problem must be solved by national dialogue. This is the only way."

Following the meeting, Qorei held talks with Hamas at which the radical Islamic movement reiterated its commitment to preserving Palestinian national unity and avoiding all internal conflict, spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said.

"We told the prime minister that we want to preserve Palestinian unity and that we will hold dialogue to resolve all conflict," he told reporters. "No-one wants to take up arms."

Earlier, Zuhri said there had been a consensus on the need for "a united leadership."

"We agreed to protect Palestinian safety and security and we asked brother Abu Alaa (Qorei) and the security commanders to work altogether to safeguard security."

Qorei was expected to remain in Gaza overnight before chairing a session of the national security council, another body usually headed by Arafat, on Sunday.

Arafat's wife Suha asked a member of the Palestinian delegation with him in Paris to take a message to the leadership in the West Bank town of Ramallah, sources close to the ailing leader said. Details of the message were not released.

While Qorei was in Gaza, his predecessor as prime minister, Mahmud Abbas, chaired a PLO executive committee meeting in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

- AFP