GAZA CITY (AFP) - New Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Mahmud Abbas was wrapping up a visit to the Gaza Strip after failing to persuade the radical Islamist group Hamas to join the political mainstream.
Abbas was concluding a series of face-to-face talks with faction leaders by meeting local heads of the leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) before heading back to his base in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
In talks with Abbas late Tuesday, the Hamas leader in its Gaza stronghold, Mahmud Zahar, refused to contest January`s election to replace Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority or halt attacks against Israeli targets.
While Hamas` decision to boycott the election should clear the path for Abbas` victory, it has once again exposed the divisions over the whole legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority.
"The presidential election is illegal," Zahar told reporters. "This election is a continuation of the Oslo process which has already failed and is finished."
The announcement had been widely expected as Hamas has consistently rejected the 1993 Oslo autonomy accords, which paved the way for the creation of the Palestinian Authority.
The smaller Islamic Jihad movement had confirmed on Monday that it would not contest the election slated for January 9.
Abbas is thought to have won the backing of the mainstream Fatah movement to be its candidate in the ballot and Hamas` boycott should further clear his path.
To date the only man to declare his candidacy is former Hamas official Sheikh Talal Sidr who quit the movement back in 1997 to become a junior cabinet minister.
Sidr told AFP on Wednesday that he would campaign on a programme of "continuing the polices of Yasser Arafat" who died last Thursday.
Abbas has established a reputation as a leading moderate within the Palestinian leadership, long arguing that there can be no military solution to the Middle East conflict.
In a brief stint as prime minister last year, he managed to persuade armed groups such as Hamas to call a truce, known as the hudna, which collapsed seven weeks later amid mutual recriminations.
However, both Hamas and Jihad played down the prospects of a new ceasefire in the current situation.
Zahar said that a change of tactics could only be considered if Israel met a rafat of conditions that Hamas knows is unrealistic.
"If the Zionist entity stops all aggressions, assassinations, occupations and release prisoners we can discuss what we will do," he said.
"It`s not the time to speak about a hudna," senior Jihad official Nafez Azzam said.
Abbas` desire to end the gun culture that pervades the Palestinian territories was bolstered late Sunday when he escaped unharmed from a shoot-out in a mourning tent for Arafat shortly after his arrival.
Officials have insisted that the shooting, which left two guardsmen dead, was a result of internecine disputes between Fatah radicals and the security services, and not an assassination attempt.
The point was again underlined overnight when a high-ranking Palestinian intelligence officer was badly wounded by masked gunmen in the northern West Bank city of Nablus overnight.
Muiin al-Sakran, 36, was shot nine times in both legs in the old city of Nablus before his attackers managed to flee.
11/17/2004 - 12:21 GMT - AFP