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Abbas dismisses mediators' plea to disarm militants

Wed 21 Sep 2005

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday brushed aside an appeal from the quartet of international peace mediators to dismantle militant groups, saying he knew best how to handle them.

"With regard to dealing with the Palestinian organisations, this is our affair," Abbas told reporters in the town of Rafah on Gaza's border with Egypt. "We know more and are more capable than others in dealing with our brothers."

Ministers of the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union said in a joint statement on Tuesday that following Israel's pullout from Gaza, Palestinians needed to "dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructures".

Israel and Washington have long demanded Abbas disarm militants in order to help restart peace talks. The moderate Palestinian leader has preferred to co-opt militants with jobs after having coaxed them into a ceasefire in February.

He believes that to try to crush militants -- seen by many Palestinians as "heroes of resistance" to Israel -- would risk civil war while Palestinians remain far short of achieving a state on lands occupied by Israel in a 1967 war.

While jettisoning the small Gaza Strip, Israel continues to expand much larger settlements in the West Bank that it vows never to cede under any peace treaty. They straddle land at the heart of Palestinian aspirations to a state of viable size.

MILITANTS POWERFUL

Militants rose to dominance in the streets during a revolt against Israel and have flexed their power in the wake of the Gaza pullout with marches by thousands of heavily armed men, who portrayed the Israeli departure as a victory for their fight.

They have said the ceasefire could fall apart if Israel keeps tightening its grip on the West Bank.

The Islamist movement Hamas, which spearheaded a suicide bombing campaign against Israel for years and is sworn to its destruction, plans to run candidates in a Palestinian parliamentary vote next year for the first time.

Israel and Washington fear that Hamas, forecast to win up to a third of votes in the election, could use its rise towards the Palestinian political mainstream to block future efforts to reach a permanent peace agreement.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said Israel could obstruct preparations for the vote if Hamas is allowed to run without first disarming and renouncing his vow to destroy Israel.

The Quartet, which in 2002 drafted a "road map" peace plan, said armed groups should not run in the Palestinian ballot as there was a "a fundamental contradiction" between militant violence and "the building of a democratic state".

But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has cautioned that Israel should give the Palestinians leeway for "the evolution of their political process".

Abbas said he welcomed the Quartet's endorsement of a future Palestinian state, which is mentioned in the road map and which the Palestinians want to establish in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.

The road map demands the dismantling of militant groups as well as a halt to Israel's enlargement of West Bank settlements.