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Abbas: Israel ready for truce
14/04/2008 18:14 - (SA)
Ramallah - Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas said on Monday that Israel is ready to reach a truce with the Hamas-run Gaza Strip but through Egyptian mediation, a government spokesperson said.
Abbas made his comments at a cabinet meeting in Ramallah the day after his second meeting in a week with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem.
"The meeting (with Olmert) focused on a truce, the means of applying it and imposing security," said Palestinian government spokesperson Riyad al-Malki.
Abbas spoke "about Israeli conditions and claimed that Olmert showed he was ready for a truce with the Egyptians as intermediary", Malki said.
The Palestinian president said Israel's conditions for a Gaza truce included "a halt to all rocket attacks, respect for the truce by all (Palestinian) factions and an end to contraband" between Gaza and Egypt, Malki added.
Abbas stressed that Israel would sign an accord with the Egyptians and not Hamas, the spokesperson said.
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat has been dispatched to Egypt and Jordan to pursue the truce negotiations.
After the cabinet meeting, Abbas told reporters that "efforts are increasing with the Egyptians to reach a truce" in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has said it would not negotiate a truce with the Islamist Hamas movement but indicated that if the Palestinian militants in Gaza stopped firing rockets into Israel, the Jewish state would stop retaliating.
"Israel wants sustainable quiet in the south and that can be achieved through the absence of hostile fire from Gaza into Israel, a cessation of Hamas-inspired terror and an end to the illicit transfer of weapons (from Egypt) into Gaza," Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev said.
- AFP
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