ABBAS IN TURKEY FOR TALKS

Abbas in Turkey for Mideast talks: report Fri Feb 6, 3:01 pm ET

ANKARA (AFP) – Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas arrived Friday in Ankara for talks with Turkish leaders, the Anatolia news agency reported.Abbas went straight into a dinner with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of a meeting on Saturday with President Abdullah Gul and other officials, the report said.A Turkish officials said the talks would centre on all aspects of the Palestinian problem, including efforts to secure unity among Palestinian groups.Ankara has repeatedly stressed that ending hostilities between the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and Abbas's West Bank-based Fatah movement is critical if the Palestinian desire for statehood is to be realised.Turkish officials have suggested that a Palestinian unity government comprised of non-partisan technocrats could be a first step in that direction.Turkey assumed an active diplomatic role during the recent war in Gaza, acting as a mediator between exiled Hamas leaders and Egyptian officials who sought a ceasefire deal.Erdogan strongly criticised Israel, a close ally of Turkey, during the 22-day offensive. Last week he stormed out from a heated debate on the issue at an international forum in Switzerland after clashing with Israeli President Shimon Peres.His attitude triggered criticism at home that Turkey, a NATO member, was acting as a supporter of Hamas, listed as a terrorist group by the West.Ankara has defended its policy, saying that it does not approve of Hamas violence, but peace cannot be achieved between Israel and the Palestinians by ignoring the Islamist movement, which has solid popular support.Predominantly Muslim non-Arab Turkey has been Israel's main regional ally since the two signed a military cooperation accord in 1996.But Ankara has also maintained close ties with the Palestinians, whose struggle for an independent state enjoys strong public support in Turkey.

Israeli police grill Olmert for 13th time Fri Feb 6, 8:44 am ET

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israeli police on Friday questioned outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for the 13th time since allegations of graft emerged against him in May.He was questioned for three and a half hours at his official residence in Jerusalem, police said.Olmert has been questioned by police 12 times previously on several different alleged cases of corruption, suspicions that forced him to resign in September.The allegations all date back to the 13 years before he took office, when he was mayor of Jerusalem and during his term as trade and industry minister.Olmert, who insists he is innocent, resigned on September 21 but remains at the head of a caretaker government until after early general elections to be held on Tuesday.

A setback for Turkey as Mideast broker By Yigal Schleifer FEB 6,09

Istanbul, Turkey – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's recent outburst at the World Economic Forum, where he berated Israeli President Shimon Peres for Israel's attack on Gaza, has won him unprecedented popularity in the Arab world.Mr. Erdogan's tirade may help Turkey reconnect with the region after decades of being estranged. But it could also damage Turkey's aspirations to be a mediating power in the Middle East, particularly between Israel and its neighbors.The cost [of his actions] was possibly the loss of something that was starting, but that hadn't matured, and that was Turkey's emerging role in the Middle East, says Semih Idiz, a columnist who writes on foreign affairs for the Milliyet newspaper. Erdogan made his position very apparent, and it's hard to see how he will be an honest broker at this stage.Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to visit Turkey Friday, according to Turkish newspapers. Also this week Turkish President Abdullah Gul made a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia Thursday. One of the topics expected to be on the agenda was the recent war in Gaza, during which Mr. Erdogan's criticism of Israel was especially harsh – stronger than that of most Arab leaders. The prime minister accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity and said it should be barred from the United Nations for ignoring a Security Council resolution calling on the fighting to stop.At the Davos panel, which also included UN head Ban Ki Moon and Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, Erdogan responded angrily to Mr. Peres's defense of Israel's actions. When it is time to kill, you know how to kill well. I know well how you kill children on beaches, how you shoot them, Erdogan told the Israeli president, wagging his finger. Erdogan also accused Israel of violating the sixth of the Ten Commandments – Thou shalt not kill.The performance earned him plaudits at home and throughout the Middle East. In Gaza, thousands gathered the next day to honor Erdogan at a rally festooned with Turkish and Palestinian flags.

The cheers in what was once an Ottoman territory were an important indication that Turkey's effort to reconnect with the Arab world after years of being cut off, was bearing fruit.

Honest broker image takes a hit
Still, analysts warn that the mood on the street might not reflect that of the region's leaders.I think certainly, in the eyes of the Arab street, Erdogan is now very popular. But it doesn't improve his mediating role anywhere else but in Syria, says Henri Barkey, a Turkey expert at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University.Erdogan's rhetoric may have been especially costly, experts warn, in terms of Turkey's continuing role in working to bring Israel and Syria together. Playing on its good relations with both countries, Ankara facilitated a series of indirect talks between the two countries that it hoped would lead to direct peace negotiations.But those talks are unlikely to continue under the new Israeli government due to be formed after Feb. 10 elections because the figures involved in the talks will depart, says Alon Liel, a former Israeli diplomat in Turkey and chairman of the Israel-Syria Peace Society, a group working toward the resumption of talks between the two countries. From the Turkish side, the mechanism has not only collapsed but we have entered a situation in which I have a lot of doubt that an incoming Israeli government will look at Turkey as a reliable mediator, Mr. Liel says.We took a big hit on the Israeli and Turkish side of the triangle, but we now have an American aspect to this that we didn't have before. Everyone is waiting for a signal from Obama, he adds.Erdogan has said that part of his anger at Israel stems from the fact that he believes Turkey was close to getting Israel and Syria to enter direct negations and that the Gaza attack scuttled that. But many experts believe the indirect talks had already reached a plateau before the war in Gaza.The fundamental issues were not bridgeable by Turkey. For that, you need the United States, says Mr. Barkey.The issue is that the Turks expected to be sitting at the table once the Americans picked up the ball, that they had earned it. The question is, Have the Gaza events dealt Turkey out of this?

Turkey: needed to rehabilitate Syria
But some warn that cutting Turkey out of the peace process, particularly when it comes to Syria, would be a mistake. Joshua Landis, codirector of the Center for Middle East Studies at Oklahoma University and author of the Syria Comment blog, says that Ankara's improved relations with Damascus have helped attenuate the link between Syria and Iran. If Syria and the US were to start talking, Turkey could act as a handmaiden, Landis says. Turkey is going to help rehabilitate Syria. That is Erdogan's entire strategy: It's not that we are siding with Syria and Iran against Israel. It's that we are going to help Obama. We are the key to the Islamic world because we are the enlightened Muslims. We can be the crucial go-betweens, he says.

There's a lot of power to that argument.

Trying to undo rhetorical damage
For now, there appear to be some signs that Ankara is trying to step back from Erdogan's fiery rhetoric. Speaking to reporters after a recent cabinet meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said: We give special importance to our bilateral ties with Israel, and we want to preserve ties with that country.We are now looking towards the future. Turkey is not targeting Israel and the Israeli people, he said.

But some observers expressed concern that, ultimately, the substance of Turkey's message – that it should be seen as an important part of the equation in resolving the Middle East conflict – is being lost in the way it is being delivered. For the long run, the style and the rhetoric of Erdogan are unsustainable, says Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Istanbul's Bilgi University.

Hamas negotiators stopped with suitcases of cash By SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writer – Thu Feb 5, 3:09 pm ET

CAIRO – Hamas negotiators left Egypt without a long-term cease-fire with Israel on Thursday — but not before some members of the militant group's delegation were stopped at the Gaza border carrying millions in cash.The delegation walked away from the cease-fire talks because of disagreements over the blockage on Gaza and border security. Talks will continue at a later date.An Egyptian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the group initially refused to be searched by Egyptian authorities at the Rafah border crossing. When the group relented, authorities found $7 million and 2 million euros ($2.5 million) in cash in their suitcases. Another security official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said $9 million and 2 million euros were found. The discrepancy could not be immediately explained.The money was later deposited in an account in Egypt by a Hamas member who stayed behind while the rest of the delegation was allowed to return to Gaza, the second security official said. He later returned to Gaza, the second official said.It was not clear what would happen to the money.There was no immediate comment from Hamas.The incident is a sensitive one for Egypt, particularly now, when Israel is demanding a halt to Hamas smuggling into Gaza as part of truce negotiations.Israel and Hamas do not talk directly, so Egypt has been mediating the talks on solidifying the shaky cease-fire that went into effect on Jan. 18, ending Israel's three-week offensive on Gaza.

Egypt had set Thursday as an expected date for reaching a long-term truce deal.

But a Hamas official, Mohammed Nasr, said Thursday that differences over opening the border crossings into Gaza were preventing the deal. Nasr was part of the negotiating team that left Cairo, but he is from the Syria arm of Hamas and not the group returning to Gaza.Hamas demands that any truce include the full opening of borders into Gaza, which Israel and Egypt have largely kept sealed since Hamas seized control of the territory from Palestinian rivals Fatah in 2007. Hamas also wants a role in administering the border crossings in recognition of its power in Gaza.Israel says it will not ease the blockade of the densely populated and impoverished coastal strip without international guarantees Hamas will be prevented from smuggling more weapons into Gaza. It does not want Hamas to have a role in controlling Gaza's border crossings.Nasr said smuggling would only stop if the borders were open.The main point revolves around us getting a clear and honest commitment to lift the blockade completely. We still didn't get that, Nasr told The Associated Press before leaving to Damascus. We have no agreement until we have an agreement on everything.He said his group is expecting answers from the Israelis on the border issue. His comments came as Israel's point man on the negotiations arrived in Egypt for talks.The deputy head of Hamas, Moussa Abu Marzouk, told the AP by telephone from Damascus that talks have failed so far because of what he called Israeli stubbornness and setting new conditions at each stage.He said Israel said it would open the crossings by 70 percent without giving Hamas details how this percentage would be defined.Hamas has smuggled money into Gaza before. In 2006, a senior Hamas official bragged about successfully carrying $42 million across the border. Arab banks have generally refused to transfer money to Gaza for fear of running afoul of the United States, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization. The money has helped keep afloat the Hamas government, which is generally shunned by foreign governments. Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Ashraf Sweilam in Rafah, Egypt, contributed to this report. (This version CORRECTS spelling of Moussa Abu Marzouk))

Israel still dealing with international fallout By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer – Thu Feb 5, 3:24 am ET

JERUSALEM – More than two weeks after halting its Gaza offensive, Israel is still dealing with the international fallout, including a very public spat with the leader of Turkey, a slew of war crimes allegations and broken ties with Venezuela, Bolivia and Qatar.It's not quite a major diplomatic crisis, but it is a serious public relations problem for the Jewish state, which once again finds itself on the defensive against an avalanche of accusations.Israel's defenders say the country was acting in self-defense and charge that no other country would be singled out for the kind of criticism that has been slung in its direction since the beginning of the Gaza offensive on Dec. 27.The Foreign Ministry says Israel's important relationships are unharmed and predicts the international mood will pass.The three-week offensive, aimed at halting years of rocket fire at Israeli towns from Gaza, killed some 1,300 Palestinians, at least half of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials. Thirteen Israelis were killed, including three civilians.Perhaps the most noteworthy outburst was Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spat with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum, usually a refined get-together for the world's most powerful.You kill people, Erdogan snapped at Peres, shortly after Peres offered an impassioned defense of the Israeli operation and shortly before Erdogan stormed off the stage.Despite hurried attempts at damage control from both sides, the flap has further disrupted the close alliance between the two countries. The hordes of Israeli package tourists who vacation in Turkey are reportedly staying home.The Davos incident came as a Spanish judge decided to open a war crimes investigation into a 2002 incident in which an Israeli F-16 killed a top Hamas mastermind in Gaza along with 14 other people, including nine children. Though it dealt with an earlier incident, the timing was clearly linked to the current violence.Hugo Chavez's Venezuela expelled the Israeli ambassador at the height of the fighting and Israel expelled the Venezuelan envoy in response. Bolivia couldn't expel the Israeli ambassador because it doesn't have one, but followed Chavez's lead by announcing it was cutting off ties.

The small Persian Gulf state of Qatar said it was freezing ties and closed Israel's representative office — a key Israeli foothold in the Arab world — while Qatar's fellow Arab League member Mauritania suspended relations but let the Israeli ambassador stay. Syria called off the indirect peace talks it was holding with Israel through Turkish mediators.Those incidents followed weeks of protests in European capitals and across the Muslim world.The United Nations has called for investigations of Israel's shelling of several of the organization's compounds in Gaza, several rights groups have suggested Israel might be guilty of violating the rules of war and a group of U.S. professors is trying to organize an academic boycott.The Palestinian Authority has now recognized the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, a move aimed at paving the way for a war crimes investigation, though Israel has not ratified the treaty that established the court and thus cannot be prosecuted.On the other hand, Israel's most important ally, the U.S., gave its backing, with both the outgoing president and his successor stressing Israel's right to defend itself. Street protests aside, most world governments made do with only careful criticism.Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry, said Israel's key international alliances were unaffected and called the outpouring of anger a temporary phenomenon.We have come under some criticism from some countries more than from others, but basically everything can be handled within the normal framework of normal relations, he said.Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, a professor of international relations at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, called the current climate a crisis situation attributable largely to an international double standard. People are expecting from us to be more moral, more just, more nice in this kind of conflict and sometimes it's indeed very difficult, he said. He mentioned Russia's war in Chechnya and Turkey's war against Kurdish rebels as examples of conflicts that caused far higher civilian casualties but received less attention and criticism. Many Israelis were especially rankled by Erdogan's comments, both because Israelis generally regard Turkey as friendly and because of Turkey's own spotty human rights record. It's a shame to look at how this prime minister behaves. He doesn't mention what he does to the Kurds, the Turkish-born Bar-Siman-Tov said. The conflict between Turkey and Kurdish armed groups has claimed tens of thousands of lives since the 1980s, including thousands of civilians.

Israel has been in this position before, most recently after its 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. That war ended inconclusively, with some 1,000 Lebanese and 159 Israelis dead, and drew similar condemnations of Israel's tactics and weaponry. Then, as now, Israel responded that it was attacked by guerrillas hiding among civilians and had no choice. The criticism this time resembles that of 2006, said Jonathan Spyer, an expert on international affairs at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center near Tel Aviv. Israel receives vastly disproportionate attention worldwide even in normal times, he said, and in times of conflict it becomes accentuated.There has been a slight change in tone, he said, because this time, unlike in the Lebanon conflict, Israel is not seen to have failed. This time Israel is being portrayed as the nasty neighborhood bully, rather than as an incompetent, flailing monster,he said.

Five rockets found in south Lebanon: army Wed Feb 4, 2:22 pm ET

TYRE, Lebanon (AFP) – Lebanese soldiers and UN peacekeepers on Wednesday discovered five rockets in the south of the country five kilometres (three miles) from the Israeli border, the army and the UN said.The katyusha rockets were found by a joint patrol of the Lebanese army and the UN peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, in the Hamul valley inland from Naqura at the southern end of the country, an army spokesman told AFP.They were not ready for firing, the spokesman said, without saying whether the rockets were new or old.Confirming the discovery, UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane told AFP: There was also a launching pad and some electric wires.UNIFIL and Lebanese Armed Forces investigation teams are on the location and the investigation is ongoing, she said.On January 8, during the Jewish state's assault on the Gaza Strip, four rockets fired from Lebanon fell on the north of Israel, injuring two women.These isolated launches raised the prospect of a second front opening in the Gaza war and the Israeli army replied by firing several mortar rounds towards Lebanon.A week later several more rockets landed on northern Israel, without causing injuries.The Shiite Hezbollah movement, the Israeli army's opponent in a war in the summer of 2006, denied involvement in last month's rocket firing.

Israel and Hamas Prepare for the Next Gaza War Wed Feb 4, 12:45 pm ET

Children and the trauma of war BBC As Israel prepared to launch its assault in Gaza in late December, it braced for substantial casualties among its troops. Commanders warned their men of Hamas' suicide commandos, missiles that could smash tanks and knock helicopters out of the sky, and long-range rockets that could reach deep into Israel. Yet when the dust had settled, the Islamist militants' primary military achievement was to maintain its rocket fire into Israel throughout the 22-day conflict. Of the 10 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza, four were victims of friendly fire. The militants continue to fire rockets. On Tuesday a medium-range Grad missile struck the Israeli port city of Ashkelon in what may be Hamas' closing shot before an Egyptian-brokered truce finally takes effect. Hamas and its supporters have claimed victory as a result of simply being able to survive the fierce Israeli onslaught. As a result, Hamas says, Israel lost the political battle - its pummeling of Gaza and the heavy Palestinian death toll has offended many former supporters, leaving Hamas' political position strengthened. But in battle, Israel clearly held the upper hand. During the conflict, very few of Hamas' 15,000 fighters appeared, and neither did its feared arsenal of Iranian-supplied weapons. (See pictures of Gaza digging out.) Several senior Israeli officers provided TIME with a detailed account of the military campaign. There was never a single incident in which a unit of Hamas confronted our soldiers, one Israel Defense Forces (IDF) official says.We kept waiting for them to use sophisticated antitank and antiaircraft missiles against us, but they never did. The Israeli military reported only four attempts by suicide bombers instead of the dozens they had anticipated from Hamas' special kamikaze unit.

So what happened to Hamas? Israeli military officials offer a triumphalist explanation in which the Islamist militants simply wilted in the face of Israel's overwhelming firepower. By this reasoning, Israel had overinflated the Hamas threat. The militants are able to lob dozens of crude, badly aimed rockets into southern Israel, but that may be the limit of their abilities. And Israeli officials are congratulating themselves on their tactics. Hamas and [Lebanon's] Hizballah are worried that Israel has broken the DNA code of urban fighting, says reserve Brigadier General Shalom Harari, while cautioning that Hamas' military leaders are probably already at work planning ways to block the Israeli military's next assault if fighting in Gaza breaks out again, as it undoubtedly will. Not surprisingly, Hamas disputes the Israeli account. One Gaza commander in the Izzedin al-Qassam brigades, Hamas' fighting force, said the Islamists' plan had been to draw Israeli troops into the crowded urban neighborhoods of Gaza City, where the Israelis would lose the protection of helicopter gunships circling overhead. We were fighting a modern 21st-century army, and we're just a guerrilla resistance movement, he says. What did you expect - for us to stand in a field and wait for the Israelis to mow us down? Indeed, in the classic guerrilla playbook, the insurgent army avoids going toe-to-toe with a conventional force armed with vastly superior weapons, armor and air support. If he has a choice, the guerrilla seeks to survive to fight another day and allow his adversary's momentum to work against him in terms of the war's political impact. Israel halted its advance on the edges of Gaza City, calling a cease-fire on Jan. 18, and Hamas' guerrillas - if indeed they were waiting in ambush - went unchallenged. Still, Israeli war strategists are at a loss to explain why Hamas failed to use the antiaircraft missiles that Israeli intelligence was sure that Iran had provided. It's an enigma, one IDF officer says. The air over Gaza was thick with drones, helicopters and F-16s, and Hamas didn't fire a single missile at them. Two possible explanations: either Israeli intelligence was wrong and Hamas simply didn't have the weapons or the militants are saving them for the next round.

Israel may have confounded Hamas' plans to defend Gaza by entering the territory from three directions, avoiding the main roads which Hamas had mined and booby-trapped. Officers say Hamas and other Gaza militant groups had prepared a defensive wall using hundreds of explosives, mines and booby traps. But for the most part, the Israeli forces were able to go around it, cutting straight to the coastal road and moving down toward Gaza City before methodically dismantling Hamas' defenses. Once they had established positions inside Gaza during the first 48 hours of the ground assault, the Israelis launched forays against targets but largely kept to the edges of crowded refugee camps and neighborhoods where Hamas might be lurking. Each battalion commander, using a vision provided by a pilotless drone overhead, advanced his men slowly, working out what one officer described as micro-tactical solutions as they moved along. In house-to-house searches, soldiers avoided entering through doorways, which might have been booby-trapped. Some Israeli human rights organizations claim that soldiers used Palestinian detainees to clear houses. But typically the soldiers crashed through walls. Troops were ordered not to enter Hamas' tunnels; dogs and little robots were sent down instead. And, as one officer explains, everything suspicious was bombed. Civilians were urged beforehand to flee, but casualties swiftly mounted as the Israeli juggernaut rumbled through Gaza. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the offensive, nearly half of them civilians.

By the end of the conflict, Hamas was still firing rockets, but far fewer, and its rocketeers became easy targets. Less than a minute after Hamas fired a rocket, the Israelis were able pinpoint and destroy the launch site. As one senior Israeli officer says, Everyone is digesting the lessons of the Gaza war - us and them. And neither side expects last month's showdown in Gaza to be the last.

Israel's Netanyahu vows to topple Hamas Wed Feb 4, 11:40 am ET

HERZLIYA, Israel (AFP) – Benjamin Netanyahu, widely tipped to become Israel's prime minister after elections next week, vowed on Wednesday to topple the Hamas movement in Gaza, calling the Islamists an Iranian proxy.In the end of the day there will be no choice but to remove the Iranian threat in Gaza, Netanyahu told the annual Herzliya security conference north of Tel Aviv.There will be no escape from toppling the Hamas regime which is the Iranian proxy in the Gaza Strip, he said. This is the real threat we are facing.If I'm elected, the biggest, most important task of my government will be to fend off the Iranian threat in all aspects, he said. It will oblige us to work on all fronts, including harnessing the US administration to stop the threat.The 59-year-old former premier, whose Likud party is expected to have the most seats in the 120-member parliament after next Tuesday's vote, said the divided Palestinians were too weak for a peace deal.Palestinian society is deeply divided... They are not strong enough to accept minimal concessions for a peace deal and are not strong enough to fight terror, he said.The reality is very clear -- any territory we evacuate today will be taken over by Iran, he said, alluding to Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, which he opposed.Netanyahu vowed to form a unity government in the event that he wins the election.If elected, I intend to unite all central powers in the country in a national unity government, he said.I will turn to our natural allies, but that is not enough. We must unite the entire nation and I will turn to all Zionist parties because, in the face of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the social and economic challenges, we will have to stand together.

Qaeda's Zawahiri mocks Obama over Gaza Tue Feb 3, 4:57 pm ET

NICOSIA (AFP) – Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri mocked US President Barack Obama for his deep concern for Gaza and urged Muslims to rise up against enemy aggression, in an audiotape released on jihadist forums Tuesday.A speech entitled Sacrifices of Gaza and Plots was contained in a video produced by As-Sahab, Al-Qaeda's media arm, and made available by SITE Intelligence Group.Against the backdrop of a still image of Zawahiri, Arab leaders and dead Palestinian children, Zawahiri stressed that the Crusader-Zionist campaign of Western and Arab states and Israel will not be broken or deterred unless it suffers human and material losses.

He called for Muslims to overthrow Arab regimes and said demonstrations, which he had previously recommended, were insufficient to face the tanks and planes of the enemy.Regarding Obama and his concern for loss of Palestinian civilian lives in Gaza, Zawahiri sardonically thanked the US leader.We received your deep concern accompanied with thousands of rockets and bullets, and tons of white phosphorus, mixed with the blood, body parts and tears of the Muslims in Gaza.But the deep concern of Obama did not hold for long, for during his inauguration speech, he did not mention one word about what happened in Gaza, as if nothing happened.

Arab FMs object to foreign interference Tue Feb 3, 2:50 pm ET

ABU DHABI (AFP) – The foreign ministers of eight Arab states meeting in the United Arab Emirates called on Tuesday for an end to non-Arab interference in regional affairs, their host said.We are working to get beyond a difficult phase and create an Arab consensus on stopping unwelcome and unconstructive interference in our affairs by non-Arab parties, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nayahan said, in an apparent allusion to Iran.Iran, a non-Arab Shiite Muslim player in a region dominated by Sunni Arabs, supports the Islamist movement Hamas in its political struggle with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and his Fatah movement.

That is seen as accentuating Arab divisions between a pro-Hamas camp, led by Syria and Qatar, and a pro-Fatah faction, led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia.Sheikh Abdullah was speaking at the end of a closed-door meeting of ministers seeking to bridge the differences and generate more support for an Arab League proposal for peace with Israel.Participants reaffirmed their support for the Palestinian Authority of Western-backed president Mahmud Abbas and of the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.Tunisian Foreign Minister Abdelwahab Abdallah said their objective was to confer on the best ways to overcome our differences and to contribute to Palestinian reconciliation.Those consultations will continue at a March 3 meeting of the Arab League council in Cairo, ahead of the 22-member organisation's annual summit in Doha later that month, he added.Palestinian foreign minister Ryad al-Maliki said: We want to go to the Doha summit in a positive spirit in order for that meeting to be a success. That is why we are working to clean up our relations and create the conditions for that success.

An Arab rapprochement would facilitate Egyptian efforts toward an inter-Palestinian reconciliation, he added.Attending the meeting, in addition to the UAE and Tunisia, were Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Representatives from Iraq and Kuwait had also been due to attend, but did not do so.

Palestinian rocket explodes in Israeli town: army Tue Feb 3, 2:23 am ET

JERUSALEM (AFP) – A rocket fired by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip exploded early Tuesday in the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon, the Israeli army announced.The blast caused damage but nobody was injured, a spokesman said.Public radio said it was the first rocket to hit Ashkelon since a truce came into effect on January 18 ending the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip during which more than 1,330 Palestinians were killed.