Hamas defiant as world pressure mounts

GAZA - Militant Islamist Hamas remained defiant despite mounting world pressure a week after its win in Palestinian elections but signaled it was trying to bring technocrats into a new cabinet to make it more acceptable.

Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas's parliamentary slate, rejected US President George W. Bush's latest call for Hamas to disarm and condemned Israel's suspension of monthly tax payments to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority.

But even as he waited for President Mahmoud Abbas to formally ask him to form a new government after Hamas's surprise January 25 win, Haniyeh reached out to Abbas's defeated Fatah party and other factions to join a broad-based government.

"We want a government based on political partnership, a wide coalition, experts and technocrats," he told Reuters on Wednesday at his home in Gaza's Shati refugee camp, a three-storey building turned into the makeshift headquarters of a Hamas-led government-in-the-making.

On debris-strewn streets festooned with green Hamas flags, supporters were already referring to the 43-year-old grey-bearded leader, only half-jokingly, as "Mr Prime Minister".

Prominent Gazans and their rifle-toting bodyguards bustled in and out seeking an audience, and he received the gold-robed Qatari ambassador with many of the trappings of state.

But Haniyeh, who survived an Israeli air strike in 2003 targeting Hamas's leadership at the height of a Palestinian uprising it has spearheaded, is widely seen as unlikely to assume the top cabinet post.

His militant past would only be further provocation to the United States and the European Union, which both list Hamas as a terrorist organization.

They are threatening to cut off aid to any government run by Hamas unless the group renounces violence and abandons its charter commitment to Israel's destruction. "These demands are unjust to the Palestinian people," Haniyeh said.

PRAGMATIC POWERBROKER

Haniyeh, a pragmatist who moved up after Israel assassinated several more hardline leaders, is expected to shape the next cabinet, subject to Abbas's endorsement. Palestinian sources said he would likely meet Abbas in Gaza this weekend.

Haniyeh left open the possibility that a prime minister could be chosen from outside Hamas, a move that could ease international pressure on the Palestinians.

Some diplomats have said Hamas might even settle for a government led by technocrats as long as they meet the group's approval. Abbas, a moderate backed by Washington, would keep control of the peace process with Israel.

"We are not looking for posts," Haniyeh said. "What is more important ... is that we rescue the Palestinian people from this situation."

He voiced hope the long-dominant Fatah movement, which advocates a two-state solution to the conflict, would join the government despite vows by senior party officials to stay out.

Hamas, which has carried out dozens of suicide bombings against Israel in a 5-year-old uprising, won a big majority on a platform focusing on its charity work and corruption-free image.

Haniyeh signaled that Hamas would challenge any attempt to concentrate control of security services in Abbas's hands. Since the election, security commanders, most of them Fatah members, have made clear they answer directly to the president.

A senior Fatah official insisted the cabinet would by law have only limited local powers and be subordinate to the Abbas. He said the Fatah-dominated Palestine Liberation Organization would retain responsibility for negotiations with Israel.

Reiterating the stance of Hamas's Damascus-based political leader, Haniyeh said the group would honor commitments by the Palestinian Authority to Israel, provided they serve Palestinian interests, despite Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel.

"We will deal realistically with agreements," he said when asked about the Oslo interim peace accords signed in the mid-1990s and a U.S.-sponsored peace "road map" pushed in recent years. "Agreements that harm our people we will leave out. Agreements that serve our people's interest we will keep."

Asked whether Hamas would extend a truce it has largely abided by for more than a year, Haniyeh said Israel would first have to halt all attacks on militants and release Palestinian prisoners, moves it has rejected as dangerous to its security.

But he said Hamas was sticking to its offer of a long-term truce if Israel gave up East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, though the group refuses to drop its ultimate goal of an Islamic state that also encompasses what is now the Jewish state.

Israel has repeatedly spurned the offer as unacceptable.

- REUTERS