CAIRO - Egypt said Saturday it will invite delegations from the rival Hamas and Fatah groups for separate talks to discuss the Gaza border, breached by militants to allow blockaded Palestinians into Egypt.
"There will be an invitation to several Hamas leaders to come to Cairo promptly ... and there will also be a invitation sent to the Palestinian leadership, each separately," Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit told reporters.
"There is an Egyptian desire to control the border and to control the flow of Palestinians in and out of the Gaza Srip," he said after a ministerial meeting called by President Hosni Mubarak to discuss Gaza.
"There is also a desire to restore the arrangements which existed on the border" before Hamas routed forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in June, he said.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Abbas's spokesman said the Palestinian leader would travel to Egypt on Wednesday to meet with Mubarak and discuss the Gaza crisis.
But Nabil Abu Rodeina reiterated that the Palestinian Authority (PA) rejected any dialogue with Hamas until the Islamic movement renounced its seizure of the Gaza Strip.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been travelling back and forth across the frontier in the divided town of Rafah after militants blasted a hole in the border wall early Wednesday, allowing Palestinians to cross freely into Egypt.
Under an agreement reached in 2005 when the PA still ran Gaza, Rafah -- Gaza's only crossing that bypasses the Jewish state -- was supposed to be staffed by international observers and have cameras running to allow Israel to monitor those passing through.
But it has opened only rarely since Gaza militants captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in the summer of 2006, and the observers withdrew completely after Hamas seized control of Gaza seven months ago.
Israel has for 10 days imposed a punishing blockade on the Gaza Strip, halting supplies of foodstuffs, medical equipment and fuel in response to rocket fire into southern Israel from Gaza.
mon-str/hc
01/26/2008 20:49 GMT