Most Palestinians oppose terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and accept Israel's right to exist, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today, urging a new Hamas government to stick with the internationally backed road map to Middle East peace.
Annan chose a high-profile meeting of a UN panel that promotes Palestinian human rights to warn the Palestinians that "the international community will be watching very carefully to see how a new government rises to these challenges."
The 2006 session of the UN General Assembly's Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People opened today without its traditional display of a map of pre-1948 Palestine - now comprising the state of Israel - following a complaint from US Ambassador John Bolton.
Mr Bolton wrote Annan last month that UN dignitaries attending committee events at which such a map was displayed "can be misconstrued to suggest that the United Nations tacitly supports the abolition of the state of Israel."
The committee met as the Islamist militant group Hamas, which advocates the destruction of Israel, was gearing up to form a government after defeating Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction in a January 25th election.
The UN Security Council and the quartet of Middle East mediators - the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - have told Hamas it must reject violence and recognize Israel or risk losing vital international economic aid for its people when it takes power.
They have also urged Hamas to honor international commitments by previous Palestinian governments including to the quartet's road map to peace and Palestinian statehood.
With a transitional Palestinian government led by Mr Abbas still in power and international aid continuing for now, Hamas leaders have so far rejected those demands.