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German chancellor meets Abbas after Hamas win

Updated: 30/Jan/2006 18:36

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday became the first foreign leader to meet beleagured Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas since the radical Islamist group Hamas won last week’s election.

Merkel said she would use her talks to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority to ensure that Hamas recognises Israel’s right to exist, renounces violence and honours previous agreements between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Abbas has "a very big responsibility" and an important contribution to make in terms of encouraging Hamas to change, the German chancellor said in Jerusalem after meeting Israeli President Moshe Katsav.

She later travelled to Ramallah to meet Abbas just one day after she and Israel’s Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a joint pledge not to deal with Hamas until it recognised Israel’s right to exist and renounced violence.

Merkel’s two-day visit follows the radical Islamist faction’s landslide success in trouncing Abbas’s long-dominant Fatah movement in an historic Palestinian election last week.

"I state my principles everywhere I go," Merkel told reporters ahead of the West Bank-leg of her trip.

Katsav, Israel’s largely ceremonial head of state denied that Abbas was in a weaker position since the election and said his country wanted no escalation.

Israel, appalled at the prospect of a Palestinian government led by a group calling for its destruction and responsible for scores of suicide attacks, has spearheaded an international campaign to see Hamas isolated.

No deal with Hamas unless it recognizes Israel

Olmert and Merkel told a joint news conference in Jerusalem Sunday that they both agreed there was no way to dealing with Hamas unless it recognised the Jewish state’s right to exist.

Merkel said Hamas could not be granted international legitimacy just
because it won the election and said she would convey Germany’s position to the European Union, the biggest donor to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority.

"Cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians can only be possible if they (Hamas) meet three conditions -- the renunciation of terror and violence, recognition of Israel’s right to exist and that they accept all existing international agreements," said Merkel.

The chancellor said otherwise it would be "unthinkable" for Brussels to continue supplying funds to Hamas-inclusive Palestinian leadership.

Apart from Katsav, Merkel met Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel’s main right-wing Likud party, and visited Jerusalem’s recently renovated Yad Vashem memorial to victims of the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany.

She also met Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and like all visitng foreign leaders, she planted a tree in Jerusalem’s Grove of Nations.

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