Lebanonwire.com | Abbas to hold landmark talks with Syria's Assad

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July 5, 2005

Abbas to hold landmark talks with Syria's Assad

DAMASCUS - Mahmud Abbas is to hold talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Thursday in their first meeting since his election as Palestinian leader in January, a Palestinian official said.

The visit is expected to reinforce an improvement in ties between Damascus and the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas will also meet with the exiled heads of Palestinian factions based in Damascus amid attempts to bring them into a national unity government, said Khaled Fahum, the former speaker of the Palestinian parliament-in-exile.

Assad and Abbas last met in December 2004, after the death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but before Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian leader is due to arrive on Wednesday.

Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei had already announced that Abbas would be visiting Damascus this week for talks with exiled militant leaders on bringing them into a mooted Palestinian national unity government.

The radical Islamist movement Hamas, whose supremo Khaled Meshaal is based in Damascus, announced Monday it would not take part in the national unity government, aimed at overseeing Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip.

Faruq Kaddumi, head of the mainstream Fatah group and a man whose relations with Abbas are notoriously bad, met in Damascus on Monday with Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara before holding talks with the faction leaders in Syria.

Ten opposition groups have been based in the Syrian capital since the 1980s, but they closed their Damascus offices two years ago and their leaders adopted a low-key approach amid US charges of Syrian support for Palestinian radicals.

Relations between Damascus and Arafat varied over the decades from strained to hostile, especially after the 1984 autonomy accords between Israel and the Palestinians that were vehemently opposed by Syria.

But the veteran Palestinian leader and the late Syrian president Bashar al-Assad met in March 2001 on the sidelines of an Arab summit in Amman.

After Damascus, Abbas is to travel to Beirut on Friday for talks with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and leaders of the 400,000 Palestinian refugees who are based in the country, said his national security adviser, Jibril Rajub.