Hamas challenges West on peace, warns of uprising

Cairo, Nov 25: The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas today challenged the United States and Europe to work for West Asia peace based on 1967 borders or face a third uprising by Palestinians losing hope of an end to occupation.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told a news conference in Cairo that there was a historic chance for peace and that Western politicians had six months after the formation of a national unity cabinet to seize the opportunity.

He based his challenge on the consensus between Hamas, rival Palestinian group Fatah and all Arab governments that the basis for peace should be Israeli withdrawal to the borders as they stood on the eve of the 1967 Middle East war. Hamas and Fatah agreed to that in a national consensus document in June.

Israel rejects the 1967 borders as the basis for a settlement but the government of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak came close to an agreement with minor border adjustments in negotiations which ended in early 2001.

Meshaal said: ''We give them six months and the real political horizon will open up. There is now a historic opportunity.'' The Hamas leader is in Cairo for talks on how to form a Palestinian national unity government alongside the secular movement Fatah. He said his talks with Egyptian officials also tackle a possible prisoner exchange deal with Israel.

''If some people think that pressure, blockades, procrastination, equivocation and false promises ... will thwart the Palesinians, will drive them away from Hamas and change the Palestinian equilibrium, they are deluded,'' he said.

''Hamas and all the resistance forces will get stronger and the second result is that this could lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority,'' he added.

''The third result is that the Palestinian people will close all the political ledgers and come out in a third intifada (uprising) project and the struggle will be wide open,'' he said.

Meshaal gave few details of his negotiations in Cairo on a national unity government, seen as a way to end the financial sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union after Hamas won Palestinian elections in January.

But Meshaal said Hamas would not accept a cabinet of technocrats based on competence regardless of their party or factional affiliations -- an idea meant to keep Hamas at a distance from the levers of power.

''(Hamas is) the ruling party ... Some people want us to give up the tools of power. This is injustice,'' he said.

As a condition for a national unity government, he also insisted on guarantees that Israel, the United States and the Europeans will lift restrictions on the Palestinian territories.

''The efforts to guarantee the end of the siege are somewhat vague ... they (the United States and Europe) say they will monitor the acts of the next government as if there is still a long time for the siege to be lifted,'' he said.

Reuters