Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal heads to Moscow on Monday to drum up support for ending international embargoes when a Palestinian unity government takes office, despite Israeli and US opposition. Russia is the only one of the four major powers sponsoring the stalled peace process to have diplomatic ties with the radical Islamist movement, blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by the West despite its rise to power. What will be Meshaal's second visit to Moscow since Hamas won elections last year, comes amid growing differences among the so-called Quartet on how to deal with the prospect of a Palestinian unity administration. Russia has criticised the crippling boycott it imposed with fellow Quartet members-the European Union, United Nations and United States-when Hamas took office and is now urging the world to give the new cabinet a chance.
| Moscow wants the Quartet to support the new government and end the boycott. |
After a top-level meeting in Berlin on Wednesday, the Quartet announced that it would wait until the new government takes office to decide whether or not to lift or maintain the diplomatic and economic sanctions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Moscow wants the Quartet to support the new government and end the boycott.
Israel reiterated its position yesterday that no one should associate themselves with Hamas after Russia announced the group's top political leader would visit. "We don't think anyone should associate with Hamas and certainly not with Khaled Meshaal who expresses the most extreme positions inside the movement," government spokesman Miri Eisin said.
"The prime minister has said this in the past and I'm sure he reiterated this position in his phone conversation yesterday with President Putin," Eisin added. Ehud Olmert and Putin spoke on the telephone late Thursday shortly after Meshaal's prospective visit to the Russian capital was announced.
Meanwhile, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called yesterday for the crippling embargo brought by the world powers to be lifted in the wake of an agreement to form a unity government of Hamas and Fatah.
“We are trying to resolve the problems of our people and to lift this unjust boycott,” Abbas said after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the current head of the European Union in Berlin. “For eight or nine months now our people have been suffering under this boycott and we want the Palestinian people to be able to lead dignified lives.”
The so-called Quartet for Middle East peace—Russia, the European Union, the United States and the United Nations—said after a meeting in the German capital this week that they would await the formation of the new Palestinian government before deciding whether to lift the aid and economic sanctions.
The measures were imposed after the Islamist Hamas movement took control of the Palestinian government following elections in January 2006. Hamas will join with Abbas’s Fatah movement under the deal struck this month in Makkah. Abbas refused to be drawn on whether Hamas would meet the three conditions set by the Quartet for the boycott to be eased—that any Palestinian government renounce violence and recognise Israel and past peace deals.