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Egypt, Hamas discuss 'lasting' truce with Israel
AFP - Monday, January 26
CAIRO (AFP) - - A Hamas team was to meet with Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman on Sunday to try to clinch a lasting truce in war-battered Gaza, after an Israeli negotiator held similar talks in Cairo.
Suleiman, Egypt's pointman for Palestinian-Israeli affairs, already met separately with Hamas and Israeli officials during the 22-day offensive with an Egyptian plan to end Israel's deadly assault.
He held talks on Thursday with senior Israeli negotiator Amos Gilad ahead of his talks on Sunday with a mixed Hamas delegation from the Gaza Strip and Syria, exiled home of the Palestinian Islamist movement's powerful politburo.
Egypt's state MENA news agency said Suleiman and the Hamas officials would mull ways to turn the week-long ceasefire into a lasting truce and to end Israel's crippling blockade of Gaza by reopening border crossings.
"Egypt will discuss with the Palestinian (Hamas) delegation ways of reaching a lasting ceasefire agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians," a senior Egyptian official told MENA.
The official said Cairo "hopes to succeed in narrowing the differences between the two sides" and to "step up its efforts in order to reach a permanent ceasefire," MENA reported.
The Hamas delegation includes Imad al-Alami and Mohammed Nasser, members of the Damascus-based politburo, as well as Gaza representatives Ayman Taha, Salah Bardawil and Jamal Abu Hashem, MENA said.
Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27 with the stated aim of halting rocket attacks from Gaza and to stop arms trafficking from Egypt, and has warned it will strike again if Hamas is allowed to re-arm.
Hamas has also threatened to resume fighting if Israel does not reopen the crossings into Gaza, where 1,330 Palestinians were killed during the onslaught, almost a third of them children. Thirteen Israelis also died during the operation.
On January 6, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak proposed terms for a ceasefire that would include putting an end to smuggling through a network of tunnels linking Egypt and Gaza at the Rafah border.
Egypt insists that only contraband goods are trafficked through the tunnels while arms are smuggled to the Gaza Strip by sea, but Israel believes otherwise.
"Israel considers that Egypt is in a position to confront the matter of arms smuggling and to put an end to it," Gilad said on Saturday.
"The Egyptians understand that Hamas is a threat not only to Israel but to them as well. Hamas is working in concert with (Egypt's opposition) the Muslim Brotherhood and with Iran."
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak is to travel to Washington on Tuesday to discuss the implementation of a bilateral agreement signed on January 16 to halt arms smuggling into Gaza.
The European Union is also looking at ways to stem the flow of arms. The issue is due to be discussed on Sunday in Brussels by EU foreign ministers and Arab counterparts including Egypt.
France, meanwhile, has sent a frigate carrying a helicopter to the region to conduct "surveillance in international waters off Gaza, in full cooperation with Egypt and Israel," President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said on Friday.
Egypt is also seeking to end a protracted feud between Hamas and the Fatah faction of secular Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, which sharpened after the Islamists took control of Gaza in deadly street fighting in June 2007.
According to MENA, several Palestinian faction leaders are due in Cairo this week, including veteran leader Nayef Hawatmeh of the Damascus-based Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, for reconciliation talks.
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Enlarge Photo
The green flag of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas flutters next to a Palestinian flag on a hill in Jabalia just north of Gaza City. The Hamas-run government in Gaza has said it will create a committee of senior officials to oversee all relief efforts in the territory after Israel's massive assault earlier this month.
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