Abbas threat rejected

The Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza rejected on Sunday a threat by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to call early parliamentary elections if reconciliation talks fail. "We reject the calling of the elections because it is illegal and unconstitutional," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told AFP.
"The law does not give any authority to the president on parliament and nobody can dissolve it before" elections are due in 2010, a spokesman for the Hamas administration in Gaza, Taher al-Nunu told AFP. The Islamists won an upset victory in the last parliamentary elections in 2006.