ABBAS TO CONTINUE TRUCE WITH ISRAEL

Abbas vows to continue truce with Israel

CAIRO: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed to continue a 16-month-old cease-fire with Israel - denying Hamas ever broke it, after meeting Saturday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Abbas said the militant group Hamas, which holds a majority in the Palestinian parliament, had not discarded the truce in the past week. Hamas did not break the truce, although some violations have happened, due to the killing of the family (on a Gaza beach on June 9), he told reporters.

The Palestinian leader vowed to uphold the cease-fire in order to have people living in peace. Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas, who returned this week from a seven-nation tour with $20 million in cash stuffed in his suitcase, pledged Saturday to keep funneling money through the Egypt-Gaza border, rebuffing European demands to stop doing so.

We are going to continue to bring money in through Rafah crossing. This is a legal process. We are not going to allow anyone to prevent us, Zahar told reporters in Gaza. Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Saturday that Israel and the Palestinians were closer to peace than they’ve been in past 50 years. The distance between us is the shortest it’s been for the last 50 years, Peres said at one-day security summit in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan.The distance is very short, but the speed is very slow.

Peres said rather than focusing on political stumbling blocks to peace, they should turn their attention to economic issues, which might be easier to solve and could lead to political solutions. Perhaps instead of solving the political border issue, why not try to construct the relationship on the basis of economic relations, he said.