Bethlehem – Ma’an – President Mahmoud Abbas called on the Arab League on Tuesday to denounce Hamas for allegedly delaying a deal that would restore Palestinian political unity.

“The Arab League now needs to take a stand on this. The Egyptians have announced clearly that they cannot show any more patience after Fatah expressed willingness to conclude a deal according to the Egyptian plan, while Hamas refused,” Abbas said.

Abbas recalled a decision by Arab League foreign ministers last year that any side that holds up a unity deal would be denounced by all Arab states.

The Fatah leader made these remarks during a news conference at the presidential headquarters in Cairo, where Abbas held talks with Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak on the unity issue.

The official Palestinian Authority news agency WAFA quoted Abbas saying, “We will not let Egypt down, we are determined to alleviate the suffering of our people, and to restore the national unity.”

Fatah signed the Egyptian proposal last week. Hamas asked Egypt to extend the deadline to allow more time to consider the plan.

Complicating matters, Abbas also reiterated that he is plans to issue a decree on 25 October to call for new parliamentary and legislative elections in January, a step Hamas opposes.

He said, “We – according to the constitution – are obliged to issue a decree on the 25th of October calling for legislative and presidential elections before the 24th of January 2010, therefore we are going to issue it.”

After winning parliamentary elections in 2006, Hamas seized full control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, prompting Abbas to dissolve a unity government and splitting the West Bank off into a separate entity.

'Goldstone delay was necessary'

Efforts to reunite Hamas and Fatah suffered a blow earlier this month when Abbas government buckled to US pressure to delay a key UN vote on judge Richard Goldstone’s report that accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza. Hamas has said they are hesitant to sign a deal with Abbas in the wake of this decision, which they labeled an act of treason.

Asked why he asked the UN Human Rights Council initially to defer the vote, Abbas said, “When the report was revealed in Geneva, Arab countries, African countries, the Non-Aligned Movement group, and the Islamic group submitted a proposal, but the superpowers rejected it.”

“Then,” he said, “the US submitted a very low-level resolution to be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, and we rejected that. It was necessary to defer discussion of the report, and this decision was made by the four groups: the Arab countries, the Islamic countries, Palestine, and the Non-Aligned group.”

Abbas alleged that the controversy following the delay of the vote was manufactured by his opponents.

“It was a campaign full of lies and false accusations. When we requested submitting the report after it was deferred, 25 member countries voted for the report, and had it not been deferred, only 18 members would have voted for it,” he said.

On Tuesday morning Abbas met with Egyptian President Mubarak and discussed political developments in the region and US plans to push forward the long-stalled Middle East peace process.

They also tackled the Palestinian reconciliation and the obstacles which rose because a deal was not reached on deadline as announced by Egypt.

Abbas was accompanied by Azzam Al-Ahmad, head of Fatah’s parliament bloc, Barakat Al-Farra, the Palestinian ambassador to Egypt, and Nabil Abu Rdeina, the president’s official spokesman.

'Settlement freeze mandatory'

Also in his remarks on Tuesday Abbas said that he would not renew negotiations with Israel until it agrees to a settlement freeze. “The American administration announced in Cairo the need to fully halt the settlements, and we insist on the need to fully halt the settlements,” he said.

“What was offered to us when we were in New York was a temporary suspension for a certain period of time, but it excluded Jerusalem and a number of specific settlements, which we rejected. Now there are bilateral talks between us and the Americans, and between the Israelis and the Americans.”