Abbas: No Talks with Israel in Shadow of Settlements - His militia kidnaps 28 "Setllers"

09/12/2010 Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Thursday ruled out negotiations with Israel as long as it refuses to freeze settlement building, but did not specify if he would agree to indirect talks.

"We will not accept negotiations as long as settlements continue," Abbas told reporters in Cairo after more than one hour of talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He said the discussions focused on "what comes after" Washington on Tuesday admitted that weeks-long efforts to persuade Israel to freeze settlements in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem had failed.

But Abbas appeared to leave the door open to a final decision on resuming talks with Israel in some form or other, saying he would first hold further consultations with Arab and Palestinian officials. "There must be clear references for peace... and we will discuss all that with the follow-up committee, the Palestinian leadership and after that there will be a decision," he said.

Egypt's government daily Al-Ahram quoted the Palestinian ambassador to Cairo Barakat al-Farra as saying that Abbas would travel later to Amman for consultations with Jordan's King Abdullah II. Abbas arrived Wednesday in Cairo from Athens and immediately went into talks with Arab League chief Amr Mussa who later told reporters that a ministerial committee on the so-called peace process would convene next week.

Washington on Tuesday announced that weeks-long efforts to coax Israel into imposing new curbs on settlement construction had failed, leaving direct talks deadlocked.

Abbas's militia kidnaps 28 Hamas supporters

[ 09/12/2010 - 01:22 PM ]

AL-KHALIL, (PIC)-- PA security militia loyal to de facto president Mahmoud Abbas rounded up 28 Hamas supporters in the past 24 hours in the districts of Al-Khalil, Nablus, Bethlehem, Tulkarem, Salfit, and Jenin, local sources reported on Thursday.

They noted that among the kidnapped in Al-Khalil were a 60-year-old leader and a journalist while in Nablus a human rights activist in his fifties was among the detainees along with university students.

Most of those abducted were former prisoners in Israeli occupation jails, the sources noted.

Relatives of Dr. Adnan Masswada, from al-Khalil, said that he was rushed to hospital few hours after his abduction at the hands of those militias four days ago, adding that he underwent an urgent cardiac catheterization.

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