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/ 30 November 2006
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, after meeting United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a new push for Middle East peace, said on Thursday that talks on a unity government with Hamas had reached a ”dead end”. The US wants to strengthen Abbas, a moderate who has been caught in a power struggle with the Hamas Islamist group.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas denied responsibility on Wednesday for a massive Israeli raid on Jericho jail, dismissing British and United States claims he had been warned they were withdrawing their protection. Two Palestinians security guards were killed and 26 wounded in the raid, five of them critically.
Even as a crane hoisted away the heavy concrete slabs around the Israeli army’s checkpoint into Jericho this week, soldiers were still waving down drivers for inspection. By the end of the day, the paraphernalia of the roadblock was gone, but the troops remained. Israel transferred responsibility for security in Jericho to the Palestinians in a largely symbolic step toward reviving the peace process.
Israeli troops pulled away from the West Bank town of Jericho on Wednesday, furling their national flag and dismantling a roadblock, but the formal handover to Palestinian security control was delayed at the last minute because of a dispute over the signing of documents, officials said.
Talks on Israel ceding control of West Bank towns to the Palestinian Authority stalled over technicalities on Wednesday, while Israel voiced caution after a top Palestinian official said militant groups were set to observe a truce. ”We did not reach a final agreement yet,” Haj Ismail Jabr, the top Palestinian security official in the West Bank, told reporters.
Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority went on the
counteroffensive, announcing a timetable for elections and reforms and urging US President George Bush to demonstrate ”action not vision” on the Middle East crisis.