A Hamas official said on Saturday the Palestinian militant group had replaced its representative to Sudan but had not quit the country. Palestinian sources had earlier said the representative left under from pressure from the United States, which has called on Khartoum to close the offices of Islamist groups. But Ghalib Hussein, Hamas information officer in Khartoum, told Reuters the former Hamas representative to Sudan, Jamal Eisa, had merely moved to Yemen after completing his four-year term in Sudan and had been replaced. ’’Hamas has an office here that is known to the state authorities. Nothing is hidden,’’ he said. ’’The representative of the Hamas movement has been moved to Yemen as part of an ordinary administrative procedure.’’
Hussein, who is also manager of the al-Aqsa centre which provides information on Palestinian Islamist groups, said the new representative, Jumaa Abdel-Fattah, was not immediately available for comment. Washington lists Hamas as a ’’terrorist’’ group and Sudan as one of seven ’’state sponsors of terrorism,’’ but recently said it would consider removing the country from the list if a peace deal to end a two-decade-civil war in the south was signed. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who last month visited peace talks in Kenya between Sudan’s main southern rebels and the government, said Sudan had yet to meet U.S. demands to shut the Khartoum offices of Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Sudanese government officials have previously said they would not bow to U.S. pressure over Islamic groups. |