Abbas says welcomes first Israel-Pakistan talks

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
said on Friday he welcomed the first public talks between
Israel and Pakistan last week, a step powerful Palestinian
militant groups greeted with hostility.

The meeting between Israeli and Pakistani foreign ministers
in Turkey signaled a diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and
a major Muslim state. It was spurred by Israel’s pullout from
occupied Gaza, land Palestinians want as part of a future
state.

Abbas told Israeli Arab newspaper Kul al-Arab that
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf informed him of the talks
beforehand and assured him that full diplomatic relations
between Pakistan and Israel would await the formation of a
Palestinian state.

“I could not say ‘no’, and I said to him: ‘As long as the
issue will serve the Palestinian cause, then let it be,”‘
Abbas, breaking a public silence on the talks, told the
newspaper.

A spokesman for Hamas, a powerful Palestinian militant
group sworn to Israel’s destruction, said Abbas’s support for
the talks hindered the Palestinian national cause.

“This is a very dangerous act to encourage other countries
to normalize ties with the occupation,” said Sami Abu Zuhri.
“It represents serious harm to the Palestinian cause and
misleads public opinion, since occupation remains on our land.”

Israel evacuated all 8,500 settlers from Gaza and is to
have all military forces out by next week.

But it continues to expand Jewish enclaves in the West Bank
where 245,000 settlers live, stripping Palestinians of land at
the heart of their aspirations to a viable state.

Militant groups also condemned Pakistani leaders over the
dialogue with the Jewish state and staged protest rallies.

Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Nabil Shaath said
initially that it was premature for Pakistan, a staunch backer
of Palestinians, to offer diplomatic “gifts” to Israel.

Influential Islamist factions in Pakistan denounced the
talks as well.

Israel has full diplomatic ties with four major Islamic
countries — Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Mauritania — and has
sought to establish links with others.

But Muslim states have generally demanded Israel first pull
out of all territory it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Writing by Corinne
Heller and editing by Howard Goller in Jerusalem)