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Palestinian official: Abbas will not seek re-election
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday he will not seek reelection in a January ballot because of the lack of progress in peace talks with Israel, Palestinian officials said.
Abbas was scheduled to give a speech later in the day to explain his decision not to run, one official said.
The Western-backed Palestinian leader announced his plans at a meeting of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the West Bank.
Fatah last month unilaterally signed a reconciliation pact with the rival Hamas group under Egyptian mediation. Hamas, however, said it needed another few days to consider the document, and that the Islamist group had reservations about it.
The Hamas and Fatah reconciliation agreement would have ended three years of civil strife and political discord, sparked when the Islamist Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in a bloody coup.
Abbas said earlier this week that his government would hold presidential and parliamentary elections on Januart 24, a movemement which garnered criticism from Hamas.
Hamas' Damascus-based political leader Khaled Meshal said the move to hold elections regardless of whether a Palestinian reconciliation deal is reached beforehand is "illegal and unlawful."
"Reconciliation first and then we go to elections," he said.
The decision to hold balloting in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza satisfies a legal requirement that Abbas decree elections, but binds him to a vote that many see as unlikely to happen, given Hamas opposition.
Abbas said Palestinian law required him to decree elections for January after Hamas rejected a unity deal that would have postponed elections until June.
"When we didn't reach national reconciliation, we returned to the constitution and the law," Abbas told the Palestine Liberation Organization's central council in Ramallah.
More
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126169.html
The Western-backed Palestinian leader announced his plans at a meeting of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the West Bank.
Fatah last month unilaterally signed a reconciliation pact with the rival Hamas group under Egyptian mediation. Hamas, however, said it needed another few days to consider the document, and that the Islamist group had reservations about it.
The Hamas and Fatah reconciliation agreement would have ended three years of civil strife and political discord, sparked when the Islamist Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in a bloody coup.
Abbas said earlier this week that his government would hold presidential and parliamentary elections on Januart 24, a movemement which garnered criticism from Hamas.
Hamas' Damascus-based political leader Khaled Meshal said the move to hold elections regardless of whether a Palestinian reconciliation deal is reached beforehand is "illegal and unlawful."
"Reconciliation first and then we go to elections," he said.
The decision to hold balloting in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza satisfies a legal requirement that Abbas decree elections, but binds him to a vote that many see as unlikely to happen, given Hamas opposition.
Abbas said Palestinian law required him to decree elections for January after Hamas rejected a unity deal that would have postponed elections until June.
"When we didn't reach national reconciliation, we returned to the constitution and the law," Abbas told the Palestine Liberation Organization's central council in Ramallah.
More
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126169.html
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Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has said he will not seek re-election when elections are held in January, Palestinian officials have said.
"The president insists on not running in the upcoming election," an official from the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee said on Thursday.
Another PLO official said Abbas will give a speech later on Thursday explaining his decision not to run.
Abbas recenty issued a decree announcing that presidential and parliamentary polls would take place on January 24.
But the Hamas-run interior ministry in the Gaza Strip ordered Palestinians in the territory not to take part in the elections.
The interior ministry said in a statement the elections had been called "by figures who do not have the right to declare it".
More
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/2009/11/200911514136555635.html