DAMASCUS (PIC)– Senior political leader of Hamas Movement and deputy-head of its political bureau Dr. Mousa Abu Marzouk has categorically denied Monday allegations that the Syrian leadership agreed to cancel the upcoming Palestinian national conference.
In an interview with the Quds Press agency Abu Marzouk explained that the Syrian leadership had agreed to receive PA emissaries sent by PA chief Mahmoud Abbas to Damascus on condition that they will not discuss the Damascus conference topic being “a Palestinian internal affair”.
The senior Hamas official also denied allegations published by the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper that he contacted Fatah leader Mohammed Dahalan to discuss the question of national dialogue.
Dahalan is widely believed to be the leader and the financier of the mutiny trend of Fatah faction that was defeated in Gaza Strip at the hands of Hamas’s fighter last June.
“Indeed I regret that a prestigious newspaper like Al-Hayat would publish such false news as it [the paper] should have contacted the parties involved and cleared the matters before publishing them” Abu Marzouk explained.
Correspondent of Al-Hayat newspaper in Gaza alleged that he quoted “trusted” sources as affirming that Abu Marzouk had contacted Dahalan and urged him to “forget the past and to open new chapter between Fatah and Hamas Movements for the best of the Palestinian people”.
But the sources alleged Dahalan didn’t react positively to Abu Marzouk’s offer due to the “lack of confidence” between the two parties. Abu Marzouk denied those “fabrications” altogether.
However Abu Marzouk welcomed the favorable change in the stand of Abbas towards calls for inter-Palestinian dialogue saying that the mere invitation of Hamas members into Abbas’s office in Ramallah and praying together was per se a good sign on that track.
Four Hamas officials in the West Bank namely: former PA vice-premier Dr. Nasser Al-Shaer Hussien Abu Kwaik Faraj Abu Rummana and MP Ayman Daraghma were invited by Abbas to pray the Friday congregational prayer together in Ramallah city.
“Hamas’s policies on returning to national dialogue haven’t changed at all but what had indeed changed are Abbas’s policies towards that dialogue” asserted Abu Marzouk.
In this regard the Hamas’s prominent official invited Abbas and Fatah Movement for “unconditional” Palestinian national dialogue stressing “What had happened in Gaza must be part of the past as we should deal with the current issues with full responsibility as everyone knows that what had happened in Gaza was prompted by the disputes between the [then Fatah-controlled] PA security apparatuses and the [Hamas-led] PA unity government”.
In addition the Hamas official opined that the efforts exerted by US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice with the aim to ensure the holding of the Annapolis conference in the USA this coming autumn will come out with three probabilities only.
The first scenario he said was to cancel the idea of the conference altogether which is a serious scenario that could tarnish the image of the USA in the region and would portray it as if it failed to convene a regional conference.
The second probability the Hamas leader added was a total failure of the conference which would shake the status of the USA in the world and would mean that all those who bet on that conference including Abbas among others will also fail.
The third is that the conference will be held but it will come out with an agreement between the negotiating parties on general headlines which the USA was and still is pressing for.
