Western powers vow to end embargo on Abbas govt

By Mohammed Assadi

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Western powers said on Monday they would end a 15-month-old embargo on the Palestinians in a boost to President Mahmoud Abbas's government after he sacked Hamas Islamists who seized the Gaza Strip.

Abbas sought to exert authority over the Hamas-controlled territory and stripped the group of its representation on the national security council.

Abbas told U.S. President George W. Bush by phone that the time had arrived to resume serious peace talks.

"The government will pursue its jurisdiction over all parts of the homeland, regardless of what happened in Gaza," Abbas's Information Minister, Riyad al-Malki, told reporters after the new government met in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Abbas formed the new cabinet last week in the West Bank after the Hamas Islamist group routed security forces dominated by his Fatah movement in Gaza.

It is unclear how much influence Abbas's government can have in Gaza, now a Hamas fiefdom that is separated from the West Bank by 30 miles of Israeli territory.

Abbas's forces want to prevent any spillover of the fighting from Gaza to the West Bank, where Fatah holds sway under Israeli occupation and where Hamas has threatened reprisals.

An aide to Abbas said Iran had encouraged the Islamist group Hamas to use violence to take control of the Gaza Strip.

"Iran supports non-democratic groups in Palestine, Lebanon and in Iraq and we hold Iran responsible for encouraging Hamas to carry out its coup in Gaza," Yasser Abed Rabbo said.

A Hamas spokesman said the charges were "weak and false".

Hospital staff said a senior operative of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Abbas's Fatah faction, was killed and another man was critically wounded in a gun battle near a main border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

BULLETS AND GRENADES

Hamas militants said they fired at the Israeli army and that the man was killed by Israeli gun fire. An Israeli army spokesman denied that shots fired from an Israeli lookout, which had also come under attack, caused the death.

He said a gunman from Gaza sprayed bullets and threw grenades at Palestinians waiting at the crossing.

Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas has said he still considers a 3-month-old unity coalition in which he is prime minister as the legitimate Palestinian government and accuses Abbas of participating in a U.S.-led plot to overthrow him.