Roundup: Palestinian factions depreciate importance of Abbas-Olmer t talks

Several Palestinian factions, including the ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), on Sunday depreciated the impact of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Terming Israeli policy as "trickery", the Hamas-led government said that Israel "has not changed its aggressive stances toward the Palestinian people and doesn't want to seriously work on stopping the occupation."

As for the 100 million U.S. dollars tax revenues that Israel agreed to release, government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said that "the money withheld by Israel belongs to the Palestinians and Israel has no right to control it or the way to transfer it."

Meanwhile, Ismail Radwan, a spokesman for Hamas, said Abbas- Olmert summit "has brought no tangible results."

"We confirm that such meetings come to pressurize the weak Palestinian side for political extortion or security measures," Radwan said in a written statement faxed to the media.

Radwan also slammed Abbas, saying that "President Abbas should have met with Prime Minister Ismail Haneya to form a national unity government."

Lawmaker Khaleda Jarrar of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) told reporters that the Abbas-Olmert talks " did not serve the Palestinian cause and brought nothing."

"The talks only help Olmert overcome his internal isolation," Jarrar said, adding that bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations "have proved their failure."

Ramadan Shallah, secretary general of Islamic Jihad (Holy War), also slammed Abbas-Olmert meeting, wondering, "How a Palestinian embraces his enemy while finds no way to talk with his brother?"

However, Abbas' media advisor Nabil Amr has defended Abbas- Olmert summit.

"There should be no combination between the internal Palestinian impasse and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis," Amr told reporters.

Responding to the factions that opposed the meeting, Amr asked that "didn't they see that we have discussed a number of important issues? All of these were achievements."

On Saturday night, Abbas and Olmert met in Jerusalem, the first such meeting since Palestinian militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier in June, and agreed to take a series of concrete steps to improve the Israeli-Palestinian situation in an attempt to bring peace to the region.

Olmert's spokeswoman Miri Eisin said after the meeting that Israel would transfer the frozen tax revenues to the Palestinians and immediately remove several roadblocks in the West Bank to ease the humanitarian plight of the Palestinian people.

Olmert and Abbas also discussed possible ways of reinforcing the mutual cease-fire in the Gaza Strip reached late November and how to extend it to the West Bank.

No agreement was reached on the release of Palestinian prisoners and the abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. But the two sides agreed to reactivate a joint committee charged with freeing Palestinian prisoners.

Source: Xinhua