Palestinian PM confirms he plans to visit Jordan

GAZA, Dec 26 (Reuters) Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh confirmed today he had been invited to Jordan but said no date had been set for possible talks in the kingdom with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on ending in-fighting.

''We pray to God that this step will be a good start to our national unity and putting our Palestinian house in order, to block intervention by (Israel) and the U.S. administration in our internal affairs,'' Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, told reporters.

Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government, said yesterday Haniyeh had accepted an invitation from Jordan's King Abdullah to attend talks in Amman.

A Haniyeh aide said the prime minister planned to meet the king and Abbas in a bid to narrow differences over forming a unity government Palestinians hope can ease Western sanctions against the Hamas-led administration.

''No time was set for the visit,'' Haniyeh said. ''In a telephone coversation with (Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakheet) it was agreed to begin mutual coordination for the visit and to agree on both the agenda and the timing.'' Tensions between the governing Hamas faction and Abbas's once-dominant Fatah flared after the moderate president this month called for early elections after inconclusive unity talks, a move Hamas called a ''coup''.

Hamas, a militant group sworn to destroy Israel, beat Fatah in a parliamentary elections in January.

A Jordanian official said Bakheet assured Abbas in talks in Amman that Jordan would leave the matter of deciding on a meeting with Haniyeh ''entirely in his hands'', to signal its strong backing of the president.

Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, has also openly expressed support for Abbas, who is backed by the West, and for a renewal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Haniyeh's visit would be the first by a Hamas leader to Jordan since 1999, when the kingdom closed the group's Amman offices and expelled its top leaders for alleged illegal activities.

REUTERS MS RAI1907