Tel Aviv - Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on
Monday questioned the legitimacy of Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas.
The controversial leader of the ultra-nationalist Israel Beiteinu
coalition party told Israel Radio that Abbas represents 'at best half
the (Palestinian) people.'
Abbas, elected in January 2005 presidential elections, saw his
term as president officially end last January.
He has since remained in office, noting that he was elected early
after the November 2004 death of late Palestinian president Yasser
Arafat, and that under Palestinian law, the presidential elections
must be held simultaneously with parliamentary elections, due January
2010.
Doubt however has arisen over whether the parliamentary elections,
too, can be held, amid the ongoing stand-off between Abbas' Fatah
party and its bitter rival, the radical Islamist Hamas movement
ruling Gaza.
Since Hamas violently seized sole control of the coastal strip,
Abbas' Ramallah-based administration has remained in control on the
ground only in the West Bank.
Lieberman accused Abbas of having called for Israel's more
moderate opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, to replace him as foreign
minister.
In the radio interview, the Israel Beiteinu leader sarcastically
described Abbas' alleged call for his replacement as a 'compliment.'
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of the hardline, but
mainstream Likud party, Sunday reiterated his call to Abbas for an
immediate resumption of peace negotiations without preconditions.
Netanyahu told his cabinet, meeting in the southern Israeli desert
city of Beersheba, that he had proposed to Abbas that they meet soon,
somewhere in Israel.
That could even be Beersheba, he said.
The Palestinians, suspicious of his sincerity, have thus far
ignored Netanyahu's calls for a resumption of talks.
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