Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah said prospects for a breakthrough have improved in their reconciliation talks which continued in the Egyptian capital on Tuesday.
Azzam al-Ahmad, head of Fatah’s parliamentary group, signalled ”a clear easing of tensions in the talks … on the prisoners and on other issues”.
A meeting between the delegations and their mediator, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, ”saved the sixth round of negotiations from failure,” he said, quoted by Egypt’s state news agency Mena late on Monday.
”I think the signing of a July 7 accord is now within reach,” he said.
He was referring to the target date to sign an agreement which will lay out an electoral law, define the make-up of security forces and of a committee to liaise between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank ahead of an election in 2010.
Ahmad said the two sides had agreed on a mechanism to resolve the issue of detainees, but did not elaborate.
Mahmud Zahar, a leader of the Islamist Hamas movement which rules the Gaza Strip, said the joint meeting with Suleiman had been a ”turning point”.
”Things are moving toward an easing of tensions in the dialogue following a breakthrough in the discussions … especially on the issue of political detainees,” he said, also quoted by Mena.
The latest round opened on Sunday.
Cairo has been mediating the talks between President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party and Hamas aimed at healing bitter divisions between the two, which sharply deteriorated when Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007.
Hamas has demanded that Abbas’s Palestinian Authority release all ”political prisoners” — referring to the scores of Hamas members arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — or provide a timetable for their release.
Both sides have since announced the release of dozens of prisoners.
Fatah and Hamas have accused each other of persecuting their rivals in the territories under their control, and both groups have been accused by human rights groups of arbitrary arrests and mistreatment of detainees.
The two groups deny they make political arrests, saying the detentions are conducted on security grounds. — AFP
