Gaza: Fatah leaders came to the home of a top Hamas official on Wednesday to begin talks on a possible governing partnership between the long-dominant Palestinian faction and the militant group that crushed it at the polls.
Hamas, which holds a majority in the new Palestinian parliament, has been seeking partners for a broad-based coalition, in part to soften international opposition to the Islamic militant group.
Fatah has been cool to the idea of joining a government led by its powerful Islamist rival, which swept to victory in the January 25 election on a platform of rooting out corruption in a Palestinian Authority dominated by the mainstream faction.
The coalition talks, at the Gaza home of Mahmoud Al Zahar, leader of Hamas's majority parliamentary faction, were the first between the two groups since the ballot.
Neither Hamas officials nor the Fatah delegation, led by Azzam Al Ahmad, head of its legislative bloc, and Ahmad Hilles, a senior faction official in the Gaza Strip, made any comment to reporters at the start of the session.
The meeting was held a day after President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah asked Hamas Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh to form a government.
But in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Nabil Shaath, a senior Fatah official, said many members of the faction objected to joining a Hamas-led administration because "we need time to rebuild the movement" after the surprise election defeat.
"Fatah is effectively a participant in power ... through the position of President Abbas. But we need to agree on a political programme in order to take part in the government," Shaath said.
Several senior Fatah figures have indicated that they want to see how Hamas manages to cope with a litany of challenges facing the Palestinian Authority, including an increasingly acute financial crisis.
Haniya, a 43-year-old Gazan viewed by many Palestinians as a pragmatist who has forged good relations with rival factions, has up to five weeks to put together an administration. Hamas has said it expects to do so within two weeks.
At Tuesday's meeting with Haniya, Abbas handed him a letter of accreditation calling on Hamas to honour past peace deals with the Jewish state.
Haniya said his group would study the document before responding. "I received the nomination letter from president Abu Mazen (Abbas). The Hamas leadership will examine the contents of this letter before soon giving a definitive response to the president," Haniya told reporters on Tuesday night.
Haniya, a mild-mannered former university administrator, is seen as the moderate face of a movement that has been behind dozens of suicide attacks and which is regarded in the West as a terrorist organisation.
Some Palestinian political analysts predicted a constitutional crisis if Hamas rejected Abbas's peace agenda. Others thought a deal could be struck but could take time.
