Ahead of his talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday noon said that talks with Hamas on forming a unity government have broken down. Abbas also said a new Cabinet must be formed to end a recent surge in violence that claimed 10 lives in three days.
"There is no dialogue now," Abbas said at a news conference with Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa before Rice arrived. A preliminary coalition agreement announced Sept. 11 "is over now, and we have to start from square one," he said.
Erlier this week, spokesman of Hamas' bloc in the Palestinian legislature Dr. Salah Al-Bardaweel has affirmed that statements uttered by aides of Abbas on his intention to dissolve the parliament were "mere propaganda." "There is no truth in that as the president himself had never mentioned such an option in any of his speeches on the one hand, and the fact that the PA bylaw prohibits him from doing so on the other hand", said Bardaweel.
