Fatah leader urges Abbas to sack Hamas government

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Oct 7 (Reuters) A senior Fatah official today urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to sack the Hamas-led government within two weeks and accused Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of sedition.

The comments from Azzam al-Ahmed, head of Fatah's parliamentary bloc, underlined the increasing bitterness of the power struggle between Islamist group Hamas and Abbas, from Fatah, after their failure to agree on a coalition government.

The government said it deplored Ahmed's words, a day after a fiery speech by Haniyeh, and said the Fatah leader was creating a ''bad atmosphere'' after strife that has killed at least 15 people in the past week and stirred fears of civil war.

Abbas, a moderate, suggested this week that he might sack the government after Hamas refused to meet his terms for forming a coalition that would at least implicitly recognise Israel -- a state that Hamas is formally committed to destroy.

''It is time the president acted on his constitutional powers and we hope as he promised us within two weeks,'' Ahmed told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, referring to Abbas's powers to sack the government.

''After those two weeks, the only solution is that we either agree on a political programme to end the crisis or go to the people and hold new elections.'' Hamas took office in March after trouncing the long-dominant Fatah in a January parliamentary election. Fatah says the president has the right to call early elections, Hamas disputes this and says only parliament can decide to.

STRUGGLE Ahmed's comments came in response to a speech by Haniyeh on Friday in which he urged Abbas to resume talks on forming a national unity coalition, while ruling out any chance that Hamas could recognise Israel.

Haniyeh also accused unnamed parties of trying to topple the government, which has struggled under a US-led aid embargo designed to push Hamas to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept peace accords. Fatah seeks a state alongside Israel.

''Haniyeh's speech causes incitement and encourages sedition,'' said Ahmed. He did not say exactly which part of the speech he considered to be seditious.

Responding to Ahmed, government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said in a statement that his words ''aimed at deliberately creating a bad atmosphere.'' Mohammed-Faraj al-Ghoul, a Hamas lawmaker and head of parliament's legal committee, accused Fatah of trying to undermine Hamas so that it would not look into corruption during Fatah's rule.

Accusations of corruption were widely seen as one reason for Fatah's defeat in the election.

Ahmed said Hamas had been involved in corruption since it took office and threatened to bring cases into the open. Ahmed dismissed Haniyeh's yesterday comment that his government had survived the tests it had because it drew its strength from God.

''Haniyeh, why are you afraid of elections if you have been put there by God?'' he said.

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