RAMALLAH, West Bank, Feb 9 (AFP) - Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas has dispatched a top aide to Lebanon for talks with Hezbollah leaders in a bid to stop them trying to wreck a Middle East ceasefire, political and security sources said Wednesday.
Abdelfatah Hamayel, who served as a cabinet minister under Abbas during his time as prime minister in 2003, was expected to urge the Shiite militia to stop funding attacks by militants amid fears that Hezbollah is trying to derail the fledgling peace process.
A senior member of the dominant Fatah faction, Abbas Zaki, was also due to travel to Lebanon next week, the sources said.
"Hezbollah are trying to increase the attacks through all the factions, not only through the Islamic parties, but through all the resistance groups including Al-Aqsa (Martyrs Brigades) and the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine)," a senior security source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
A political source said that Hamayel would try and persuade the militia to give Abbas a chance to advance the peace process with Israel after a landmark summit on Tuesday.
"Abu Mazen's (Abbas's) policy is to try and solve all problems through dialogue," he said, adding that Hamayel had left for Lebanon on Tuesday.
The sources added that Zaki, a member of Fatah's decision-making central committee, would hold talks with Lebanese leaders in Beirut and possibly meet with Hezbollah representatives.
However Hezbollah said that it had been kept in the dark about Hamayel's mission.
"We have no information about contacts between the leadership of Hezbollah and a Palestinian Authority official, as reported in some media," Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif said in a statement from Beirut.
In a speech to several thousand supporters in Beirut, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed to keep up the resistance.
"We will fight on to the end. We will not go down on our knees. Our choice is the resistance, which we will never abandon," he said, without reference to the Palestinian armed struggle.
Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath also headed to Syria, a sponsor of Hezbollah, after Tuesday's summit in Egypt during which Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon both pledged to end more than four years of bloodshed in the region.
Israel has consistently accused Hezbollah of funding attacks by militant groups, in particular the Islamist factions Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"I can tell you that the Hezbollah is very active in that, we know that they have doubled the price that they pay for carrying out a terror attack in Israel," Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner told CNN Tuesday.
"For the time being luckily they have not succeeded, but they are trying very hard and we will have, and also the Palestinians, we will have to be very very careful of this negative role of the Hezbollah and the Syrians who are behind the Hezbollah.
02/09/2005 20:51 GMT - AFP