Hamas' Zahar hails China trip as a success
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-06-02 20:01 Asked for his reaction to a call from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and
Saudi King Abdullah on Hamas to recognize the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, Zahar
said his regime was studying it, but there was no urgency to act.
"It is not an urgent issue," he said. "What is Israel going to offer
Palestine? That's more urgent."
The initiative, adopted at the Beirut summit in 2002, calls on Arab
governments to normalize ties with Israel in exchange for a full Israeli
withdrawal from Arab territories according to the 1967 borders and the
establishment of a Palestinian state.
The Hamas-led government has so far refused to recognize Israel.
Zahar said although he did not object to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's
plan to meet with Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas at the end of
this month, he thought such a meeting would be of little value.
"What is the aim for such meeting?" asked the Hamas leader, when asked to
comment on an Israeli press report about Olmert's plan to meet Abbas, the Fatah
leader.
"They've had these meetings before, what was the benefit?" Zahar asked.
"It will be like the previous meetings, it will be nothing."
An Abbas-Olmert summit would be the first between the current Israeli prime
minister, whose new coalition government was sworn in by parliament on May 4,
and the Palestinian leader.
But Olmert said in the Israeli news report that he would not abandon the
demand of a halt to all anti-Israeli attacks and the dismantling of Palestinian
militant groups, including the armed wing of Hamas.
|
