Qatar mediates to end Palestinian standoff

DAMASCUS, Oct 9 (Reuters) Qatar put forward proposals to Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal today designed to end a violent standoff preventing the formation of a new Palestinian government.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani met Meshaal in Damascus, and Palestinian politicians said he was due to travel to the Palestinian territories later for talks with President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

The Palestinian politicians said the proposals included forming a ''technocratic government'' and a meeting between Meshaal, whose Islamist Hamas movement won Palestinian elections in January, and Abbas, head of the once-dominant Fatah faction.

Fifteen people have been killed in clashes between gunmen from the two factions since talks on a coalition government foundered.

The West and Israel imposed sanctions on the present Hamas-led government, deepening an economic crisis.

''There is a Qatari initiative on the table to narrow Palestinian differences. We cannot discuss the details, but Hamas is committed to a national unity government,'' Izzat Mohammad Rishq, a high-level Hamas member, told Reuters.

The key obstacles to the formation of a government have been Hamas' refusal to participate in any administration that recognises Israel and to renounce armed struggle against the Jewish state.

''The Qataris are trying to find a way around this. Hamas thinks that Abbas is also under pressure and views his latest moves as an attempted coup,'' said one Palestinian politician, asking not to be named.

A senior aide to Abbas said the president would call for early elections if Hamas refused to accept his plan for a unity government. Hamas says Abbas has no right to do this.

Hamas officials say any agreement has to be based on the so-called ''Prisoners' document'', penned by Palestinians in Israeli jails, that Hamas agreed to in June after amendments.

The document calls for negotiations with Israel if the Jewish state withdraws from land it has occupied since 1967, continued resistance focused on peaceful means and a unity government. Hamas rejected suggestions at the time that the deal implied it accepted Israel's existence.

REUTERS SKB ND2240