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Hamas yields to pressure from neighbours and says it will sign up for reconciliation

November 12, 2009 Edition 2

RAMALLAH: The Hamas movement will sign an Egyptian-mediated Palestinian reconciliation agreement by the end of the month, the Speaker of the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) said yesterday.

Aziz Dweik told London-based al-Quds al-Arabi daily the movement would sign the deal "after receiving guarantees from Egypt that its observations will be considered".

"By the end of November the Palestinians will hear good news," he said.

The reconciliation pact focuses mainly on Hamas and its rival President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, with whom the Islamist movement has been at bitter and sometimes violent odds.

Fatah accepted the agreement, but Hamas had reservations about it.

Palestinian sources told al-Quds al-Arabi that Hamas had come under Turkish and Egyptian pressure to accept the agreement, and said Hamas agreed after receiving guarantees from Cairo.

The agreement calls for an end to internecine Palestinian feuds and the holding of general presidential and legislative elections on June 28, 2010.

Friction between Hamas and Fatah has been high since the former won the January 2006 Palestinian elections. The tension spilled over into violence in June 2007, when Hamas gunmen routed security officers in the Gaza Strip loyal to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas responded by pulling Fatah out of a unity government with Hamas and dismissing Hamas leader Ismail Haniya as prime minster. Haniya and Hamas have not accepted the dismissal and continue to administer the Gaza Strip, while an Abbas-appointed government sits in the West Bank. - Sapa-dpa