Palestinians sign reconciliation accord in Cairo

Palestinian delegation from the Gaza Strip wait at the Rafah border terminal before crossing into Egypt Palestinian factions gathered in Cairo on Tuesday signed a reconciliation deal that will pave the way for elections within a year, an AFP correspondent said.Representatives of 13 factions, including Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party and its rival Hamas, as well as independent political figures inked the deal following talks with Egyptian officials."We signed the deal despite several reservations. But we insisted on working for the higher national interest," said Walid al-Awad, a politburo member of the leftist Palestine People's Party."We have discussed all the reservations. Everyone has agreed to take these points into consideration," he told Egyptian state television without elaborating."

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank will be celebrating this agreement... We must now work to implement what was agreed in the deal," he said.Among the first tasks to be tackled is the formation of a government and the establishment of a higher security council tasked with examining ways to integrate Hamas and Fatah's rival security forces and create a "professional" security service. The accord also calls for the creation of an electoral tribunal and for the release of a number prisoners held by the rival movements in jails in the West Bank and Gaza

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday called on Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to "completely cancel" a reconciliation deal with Hamas that was signed in Cairo earlier in the day."I call on Abu Mazen (Abbas) to completely cancel the agreement with Hamas and to choose the path to peace with Israel," Netanyahu said during a meeting with former British prime minister Tony Blair in Jerusalem.

Palestinian group Fatah on Tuesday slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's call to "completely cancel" a reconciliation deal with Hamas as "unacceptable interference."

The unity deal reached by Hamas and Fatah and signed by both parties and an array of other Palestinian factions on Tuesday aims to end years of bitter divisions between the two leading political groups.Palestinians have welcomed the accord, which provides for a transitional government made up of independents that will lay the groundwork for presidential and legislative elections in a year.  But Netanyahu slammed the deal during talks with Blair, the special envoy of the international peace-making Quartet, made up of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia.He pointed to statements made by Hamas's prime minister in the Gaza Strip Ismail Haniya, who a day earlier condemned the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden."The agreement between Abu Mazen and Hamas deals a hard blow to the peace process," Netanyahu said, according to a statement from his office."How can we make peace with a government when half of it calls for the destruction of Israel and glorifies the murderous Osama bin Laden?"