US Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that the moderate Palestinian leadership will reconcile with Hamas only under certain conditions, including the Islamists relinquishing control of Gaza.
The statements came a day after Abbas's secular Fatah party and the Islamist movement penned a deal in Yemen to open their first direct talks since Hamas drove pro-presidential forces from the Gaza Strip in June. "We talked among other things about the ongoing activity in Yemen as the Yemenis are trying to encourage reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas," Cheney told reporters, referring to his meeting with Abbas in the West Bank Sunday.
"My conclusion in talking with the Palestinian leadership is that they have established preconditions which would have to be filled before they would ever agree to a reconciliation, including a complete reversal of the Hamas take-over of Gaza," Cheney added.
Hours after they signed their agreement in Yemen, the two bitter rivals were at odds as to the meaning of the agreement, with Hamas referring to it as a "framework for dialogue" and Fatah calling for its immediate implementation.
The US, Israel, and the European Union have all refused to have any dealings with Hamas unless it recognises Israel's existence, renounces violence, and accepts past agreements with the Jewish state. Cheney told Abbas on Sunday that those conditions still held, according to a senior US official accompanying him on the trip. "We won't support working with Hamas unless they were to fundamentally change their stripes," the official quoted Cheney as saying.