Abbas to accept Palestinian election delay: officials

By Mohammed Assadi

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will accept the recommendation of independent election experts on Thursday to postpone the vote he had scheduled for January, senior officials said.

The Central Election Commission said it had advised Abbas to put off the election since the rival Hamas Islamist group ruling some 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had warned it would not allow them to vote.

"We met today and we decided to tell the president, who called these elections, that we cannot have elections at the time he scheduled them," said commission head Hanna Naser.

Naser said the commission had tried to persuade Hamas to allow it to come to Gaza to prepare for the election but was rejected by the Islamists, who are arch rivals of Abbas and his more secular Fatah movement.

"Following the decision of the Commission, the president will consult with the leadership and will decide on the next steps," spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said.

"Preventing the Central Election Commission from going to Gaza Strip shows that Hamas is not anxious for the unity of the homeland and for national reconciliation."

A senior Fatah official said Abbas would "adhere to the decision of the commission" and put off the presidential and parliamentary polls, which he had scheduled for January 24.

An official announcement was expected sometime in the coming days.

Postponement will avoid a step that was destined to cause a permanent split in the deeply divided Palestinian movement. It will also delay a final decision by Abbas on his own future, after he suggested this month he might not seek reelection.

Abbas had set the election date after Hamas refused to sign a reconciliation pact drawn up by Egypt following more than a year of frustrating mediation efforts between the two hostile Palestinian factions.

The pact would have scheduled elections for June 2010.

Abbas has said on several occasions he would be ready to postpone the vote until then, if Hamas changed its mind and agreed to the reconciliation pact.

"HAND OF FRIENDSHIP" REJECTED

So far there is no sign the Islamist group intends to accept what Abbas on Wednesday repeated was the offer of his "hand in friendship." A Hamas spokesman responded immediately to the gesture, dismissing it as a "maneuver."

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri expressed no surprise at the likely postponement of the January 24 date.