Egypt delays Palestinian unity talks after new feud

DAMASCUS/CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt decided on Saturday to delay Palestinian reconciliation talks it planned to host next week, an Egyptian source said, after Islamist Hamas threatened to boycott the meeting.

The talks, planned for Monday, were intended to end Hamas's conflict with the Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas, whom Hamas officials blamed for failing to free jailed Hamas members and sympathizers.

Abbas said on Friday his forces only held criminals and not "political prisoners."

"Egypt decided to delay the Palestinian dialogue meetings," the Egyptian source told Reuters in Cairo.

Postponement of the talks coincided with a statement by Hamas's leader Khaled Meshaal that his group was ready to talk to Barack Obama as long as the U.S. President-elect respects Hamas's "rights and options."

Under outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush, Washington refused to talk to Hamas.

"We are ready for dialogue with President Obama and with the new American administration with an open mind, on the basis that the American administration respects our rights and our options," Meshaal said from Damascus in an interview with Sky News, according to its website.

Obama's senior foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough said: "President-elect Obama said throughout the campaign that he will only talk with Hamas if it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel's right to exist and agrees to abide by past agreements."

TALKS BOYCOTT

Egypt had invited Fatah, Hamas and smaller Palestinian factions to talks to try to heal a rivalry that burst into open conflict when Hamas seized control of Gaza last year.

A statement published by Egypt's MENA news agency said Monday's talks would be postponed "until the necessary and proper conditions are achieved to secure its success."

A Palestinian source in Syria told Reuters that Hamas, along with other factions who opposed Abbas, did not want to "sit among Arab foreign ministers, who will try to pressure them into signing a pro-Abbas formula."

Hamas officials in Cairo said the group would only attend if Abbas freed some 400 Hamas members and activists he had jailed.

Abbas, who with Israeli and Western backing has beefed up forces in West Bank cities, has arrested Palestinian militants in a law and order campaign.

Abbas told a news conference with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday in the West Bank that his forces arrested only those who broke the law, regardless of their political affiliation.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said from Gaza that Abbas "has placed the last nail in the coffin of the Palestinian dialogue and therefore the dialogue has become useless."

Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said Hamas's decision to boycott was backed by other countries in the region who aim to block Egypt's reconciliation effort, hinting at Hamas supporters Syria and Iran.

Hamas rejects Abbas's demand that any joint government adhere to past Palestinian commitments and opposes his peace talks with Israel.

(Additional reporting by Wafa Amr and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Deborah Charles in Chicago; Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem; Editing by Janet Lawrence)