Talks between senior Hamas members and
Egyptian officials in Cairo on a new ceasefire arrangement for the Gaza Strip
continued late into the night on Sunday, amid new warnings by a top Hamas
official that arms smuggling would continue, dpa
reported.
Members of the delegation declined to comment on the negotiations while they
were in progress, but said they expected to return to Gaza and Syria on Monday for consultations with Hamas leaders there.
The Hamas delegation is negotiating the terms of a longer-term truce to build
on twin, unilateral ceasefire declarations from Israel and Hamas last week.
Hamas and Israeli officials have indicated that much of the discussion has
centered on control of the border crossings in and out of Gaza.
Hamas wants the blockade on Gaza lifted. Israel wants assurances that weapons
smuggling into the Gaza strip will stop.
But on Sunday afternoon, Osama Hamdan, Hamas' representative in Lebanon, vowed that Hamas would continue smuggling weapons into Gaza.
"It is our right to have weapons, and we shall continue to enter arms into
Gaza and the West Bank. Let no one think that we shall surrender," Hamdan
said at a rally in Beirut.
"Those that believe that a number of aircraft carriers could monitor the
sea and that satellites in space could monitor underground tunnels and prevent
arms from entering into Gaza are delusional," he said.
Hamdan's remarks contrast with more politic statements from Hamas officials elsewhere
over the weekend.
Speaking to the satellite news network al-Arabiya from Cairo on Sunday morning,
Ayman Taha, a representative of Hamas from Gaza, said that the group would not
agree to an open-ended truce, but was prepared to negotiate an 18-month
ceasefire.
Hamas representatives had previously said they would not agree to a truce for
longer than a year.
Taha said that Hamas was prepared to accept Fatah guards at the Palestinian
side of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, provided they were
from Gaza, not the West Bank.
He also repeated Hamas' request for Turkish monitors to join European
peacekeepers at all of Gaza's border crossings.
Speaking to London's pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat on Saturday, Taha
stressed that Hamas welcomed the idea of international monitors "on the
condition that they be placed at all crossings - whether between Gaza and Egypt or Gaza and Israel."
He further said that Hamas refused to tie negotiations on captured Israeli
soldier Gilad Shalit's fate to the negotiations on control of Gaza's borders.
Hamas captured Shalit at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Gaza and Israel in June 2006.
Taha told the newspaper that the Hamas delegation had requested that talks with
the Egyptians should not include members of Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas' rival Fatah faction for the moment.
"Once we close talks on the ceasefire, we have no objection to starting
talks on reconciliation, on the condition that (Abbas) release Hamas detainees
from Palestinian Authority jails," Taha said.
Egypt is hosting parallel talks with Israel and Palestinian groups, trying to
turn both sides' unilateral ceasefire declarations into a single, lasting truce
agreement.
According to local media reports, Azzam al-Ahmed of Fatah and Salah Rafat and
Gamil Shehata of the Palestine Liberation Organisation are expected to meet
with Egyptian intelligence officials on Monday morning.
Parallel to the talks in Cairo, European Union foreign ministers were meeting
on Sunday in Brussels with Palestinian region officials.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is expected in Cairo for talks with the
Egyptians on Monday.
Special US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell is also expected in Egypt later this week.
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