Abbas coming to Turkey

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Mahmoud Abbas

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is set to arrive in Turkey tonight and hold talks with Turkish political leaders tomorrow following a deadlock in reconciliation meetings between Hamas and Fatah in Cairo on Feb. 22.

Abbas will meet President Abdullah Gül, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. “The reconciliation process of Palestinian groups and the ‘International Conference for the Defense of Occupied Jerusalem,’ [held in Doha over the weekend], will be at top of the agenda,” diplomatic sources told the Hürriyet Daily News. Palestinian president Abbas and his rival Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, gathered last week in Egypt to implement the terms of a reconciliation deal they signed in Cairo in May, which called for an interim government and general elections within a year. However, Abbas and Mashaal postponed talks on forming a unified government, “because Hamas continues to prevent the election committee from registering voters in Gaza,” according to a Fatah official.
Some elements of the “Doha Declaration,” were met with opposition from Gaza-based members of Hamas, as well as from Abbas’ government.

As a second topic of the discussions, the outcome of the International Conference for the Defence of Occupied Jerusalem was discussed.