MIDDLE EAST:Prime minister Ismail Haniyeh said yesterday that he would form a Palestinian unity government within three weeks, but its future looked bleak after diplomats said that Washington planned to boycott it and keep sanctions in place.
The US has warned Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas that peace talks with Israel will go nowhere if the unity government does not meet conditions set by the Quartet of Middle East mediators, diplomats and Palestinian officials said.
Mr Haniyeh was speaking a day after Mr Abbas formally asked him to draw up the government, which would mainly comprise Hamas and Fatah. Palestinians hope that it will end bitter factional warfare, in which 90 people have been killed, and lead to the lifting of economic sanctions.
"I am full of hope that we will be able to accomplish this [ government] in less than three weeks," Mr Haniyeh told worshippers before prayers in Gaza City.
He urged Arab leaders to endorse the government, agreed at talks in Saudi Arabia, and said that he had spoken to several Arab leaders by telephone to lobby support for an end to a US-led boycott of the Palestinian Authority.
The diplomats and Palestinian officials said the US had also warned Mr Abbas that it would shun all ministers in the new government, including non-Hamas members. "The Americans told [ Abbas] they will boycott the government, sanctions will not be lifted and peace moves will not develop as planned," one diplomat said.
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said that Washington would reserve judgment on the new government until it was formed and denied in a television interview that the US had already decided on a full boycott. But she said that prospects for a summit between Mr Abbas and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert on Monday were "obviously more complicated" by the planned Hamas-Fatah coalition.
Monday's meeting had been billed as the start of a renewed US effort to try to broker a Middle East peace deal, six years after peace talks broke down and a Palestinian uprising began. Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said he expected that the meeting would yield agreement to restart peace talks on a "definite framework for a conclusive resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict".
Mr Haniyeh said that he would begin final negotiations today with rival factions, including Mr Abbas's once-dominant Fatah, to form the new government. Talks would be aimed at resolving remaining issues such as the post of interior minister, the fate of Hamas's "executive" police and hundreds of new appointments made by Mr Haniyeh's Hamas government, most of which were not ratified by Mr Abbas.
Mr Haniyeh did not say whether Hamas would meet the Quartet - the US, Russia, UN and EU - demands for it to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept existing agreements, all conditions for a resumption of aid. Quartet envoys were due to meet yesterday evening.