Region

DAMASCUS — Syrian President Bashar Assad has won a new seven-year term with nearly 90 per cent of a vote in a poll branded “illegitimate” by the opposition and a “non-election” by the United States.

Tens of thousands took to the streets in government-held areas of Syria even before the results were announced Wednesday evening, waving portraits of Assad and the official Syrian flag.

As celebratory gunfire erupted in the capital and loyalist areas across Syria, at least 10 people were killed as the bullets fell back to earth, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Tuesday’s election was held only in government-controlled areas.

In the roughly 60 per cent of the country controlled by rebels, activists reacted with the Arab Spring slogan that has been the rallying cry of their uprising — “The people want the fall of the regime.”

Pro-government newspapers all carried front-page photographs of the re-elected president. Images of Assad in suit and tie, or military uniform, filled the programming of state television.

A source close to the regime told AFP Assad will be sworn in for a third term on July 17, addressing parliament and laying out his new policies.

The main opposition National Coalition called the vote illegitimate and pledged that “the people are continuing in their revolution until its goals of freedom, justice and democracy are reached”.

The exiled coalition also asked for “more aid for the opposition, in order to redress the imbalance of forces on the ground”.

Rebels are massively outgunned by Syria’s army, which is backed by Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s powerful Shiite movement Hizbollah, and the opposition frequently calls on states that back the revolt to better arm the rebellion.

Pro-regime daily Al Watan said the election was “just as important as that being fought by our brave soldiers on the frontlines” against the three-year rebellion against Assad.

 ‘Great big zero’ 

British Foreign Secretary of State William Hague described the election as an insult.

“Assad lacked legitimacy before this election, and he lacks it afterwards,” he said. “This election bore no relation to genuine democracy.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry called the poll a “great big zero”.

“With respect to the elections that took place, the so-called elections, the elections are non-elections,” he said on a visit to neighbouring Lebanon on Wednesday.

He said “nothing has changed” as a result, and urged Assad’s foreign backers to take action to bring an end to the conflict that has killed more than 162,000 people and driven nearly half the population from their homes.

“I particularly call on those nations directly supporting the Assad regime... I call on them — Iran, Russia, and I call on Hizbollah, based right here in Lebanon — to engage in the legitimate effort to bring this war to an end,” he said.

Russia earlier called for the speedy appointment of a new UN envoy to resume peace efforts. Lakhdar Brahimi, who brokered two rounds of abortive talks between the government and the opposition earlier this year, stepped down over the weekend, saying his mediation had reached a stalemate.

Brahimi had infuriated Damascus by criticising the election as an obstacle to his peace efforts.

Moscow, in turn, has angered the West by vetoing four draft UN Security Council resolutions in defence of Damascus, including a bid to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court.

Opposition activists said wearily that the election was likely to prolong the conflict, which has also sparked an exodus abroad of nearly three million refugees.

Speaking to AFP from Turkey, one of them who spent nearly two years trapped by the army siege in third city Homs, said he believed in a peaceful solution, but that Assad’s win made the prospects remoter than ever.

“Sadly the election means that the fighting and bloodshed will also continue, and no one knows for how long, while the refugees will stay in the camps,” he said, identifying himself only as Thaer.

“The truth is that, even though everyone wants a political solution, that cannot happen with Assad in power... The war will continue, and the Syrians will continue to kill each other.”

CAIRO — Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who romped home in Egypt’s presidential election after crushing Islamists, faces a tough task to restore stability and revive a battered economy amid fears of a return to autocracy.

On Tuesday, the electoral commission declared Sisi won 96.91 per cent of the vote with a turnout of 47.5 per cent, nearly a year after he toppled the country’s first freely elected leader, Islamist Mohamed Morsi.

The crushing victory over leftist leader Hamdeen Sabbahi had never been in doubt, with many lauding the retired field marshal as a hero for ending Morsi’s year of divisive rule 11 months ago.

But global rights watchdogs, international leaders and experts have warned that real challenges now face Sisi as he inherits a deeply polarised country.

The United States said it looks forward to working with Sisi but expressed concerns about the “restrictive political environment” in which last week’s vote took place.

The election was boycotted by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and youth groups of the 2011 popular uprising, after both were targeted in a withering crackdown on dissent.

The White House urged Egypt’s new president “to govern with accountability and transparency, ensure justice for every individual”, and demonstrate his commitment to protecting “the universal rights of all Egyptians”.

It was only in April that Washington partially lifted its annual aid to Egypt worth around $1.5 billion, which it had frozen after the military deposed Morsi.

Tough decisions needed 

In the run-up to the vote, rights groups highlighted “gross human rights violations” that have taken place since Morsi’s ouster in July 2013, with more than 1,400 people killed in a government crackdown targeting the Brotherhood and over 15,000 jailed.

The authorities have also sentenced hundreds of Morsi supporters to death after speedy trials which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed “alarm” over.

Some of the youth leaders who spearheaded the 2011 revolt against longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak have also been jailed for taking part in unauthorised protests.

Analysts say it will be tough for the authorities to restore stability amid the prevailing polarisation across Egypt.

“The Brotherhood and the revolutionaries consider him [Sisi] as an enemy,” said Ahmed Abd Rabou, political science professor at Cairo University, indicating that there was little hope of dialogue with youth movements.

“He has a military background. He is not a man of negotiation. He is a man of orders that must be obeyed.”

On Tuesday, Sisi attempted to ease concerns as he echoed the slogans of the 2011 uprising, urging Egyptians to work for “bread, freedom, human dignity, social justice”.

More than three years of political unrest has left Egypt’s economy in a shambles.

“Sisi will have to take tough decisions... such as subsidy cuts, but the military has no tradition of taking such decisions,” said James Dorsey of the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

‘Money into black hole’ 

Egypt’s foreign exchange reserves have halved since 2011 to $17 billion in April, despite receiving almost $13 billion in Gulf aid since Morsi’s ouster, while external debt has risen to $45 billion as of December.

Revenues from the tourism sector, which employs more than four million people, slipped to $5.8 billion in 2013 from $12.5 billion in 2010.

Foreign direct investment, which before Mubarak’s overthrow stood at $12 billion, have since fallen to about $2 billion annually.

Sisi has called for “strengthening the role of the state” to implement projects that would kick-start the fledgling economy propped up by Gulf funds.

“Sisi has acknowledged the economic challenges but has been careful not to give any detail about how he would meet them, suggesting that he doesn’t have answers,” Yezid Sayigh, senior associate at Carnegie Middle East Centre told AFP.

“So for the immediate future he will seek more Gulf aid and investment as his main strategy, while maintaining a repressive approach to security and dissent at home.”

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who opposes the Muslim Brotherhood, called for a donors’ conference to aid Egypt’s economy as he congratulated Sisi on his “historic” victory.

“The Saudis and the UAE [United Arab Emirates] want this government to remain in power. But if the government does not turn around the economy, they would be pouring money into a black hole,” said Dorsey.

BEIRUT — Secretary of State John Kerry defended Wednesday a US decision to work with the new Palestinian unity government, despite Israeli criticism, emphasising that it does not include any Hamas ministers.

The United States, like Israel and the European Union, consider Islamist group Hamas a “terrorist” organisation.

Speaking to reporters in Beirut, Kerry said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “made clear that this new technocratic government is commited to the principles of non violence, negotiations, recognising the state of Israel, acceptance of the previous agreements and the Quartet principles”.

“Based on what we know now about the composition of this technocratic government, which has no minister affliated to Hamas and is committed to the principles that I describe, we will work with it as we need to, as appropriate.”

Kerry also said US preparedness to work with the Palestinian government does not mean recognition of a Palestinian state.

“The US does not recognise a government with respect to Palestine because that would recognise a state and there is no state,” he said.

A new Palestinian Cabinet was sworn in Monday, after a surprise reconciliation deal reached in April between Hamas and the PLO.

The United States, the EU, the UN and Russia have all accepted to work with the Cabinet.

Despite the alliance with Hamas, which does not recognise Israel and is pledged to its destruction, Abbas has said the government would abide by the principles of the Middle East Quartet, which envisage the establishment of two states.

The US readiness to work with the new government has prompted fury from Israel, with Netanyahu branding it Tuesday as “a step against peace”.

While on an unscheduled visit to Beirut, Kerry said: “I want to make it very clear we are going to be watching it [the government] very closely, as we have said from day one, to absolutely ensure that it upholds each of those things it has talked about, that it doesn’t cross the line.”

A row over the new Palestinian government is driving yet another wedge into already shaky ties between Israel and the US as the once sacrosanct relationship comes under severe strain.

GAZA — Islamist Hamas handed control of two government ministries in Gaza to members of the new Palestinian unity government on Wednesday, a further sign of reconciliation between the rival factions after the collapse of peace talks with Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in the Cabinet on Monday in a deal with Hamas that elicited a US pledge to work with and fund the new administration, setting Washington on a collision course with Israel, which has shunned it.

Hamas, which advocates Israel’s destruction, has run the Gaza Strip since seizing the territory from Abbas’ Fateh forces in a brief civil war in 2007. Numerous past fence-mending efforts fell through over power-sharing disputes.

The new government’s main aim is to facilitate presidential and parliamentary elections to be held within six months, after which a permanent administration is set to take over.

In Gaza, new Cabinet ministers Saleem Al Saqqa, a Gaza lawyer, and Mufeed Al Hassayna, a US-educated engineer took over from outgoing Hamas ministers respectively at the Justice department and the housing and public works ministry.

The moderate Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and depends on foreign aid, appears to have banked on Western acceptance of a 16-member Cabinet of what he described as politically unaffiliated technocrats.

Ehab Bessaiso, spokesman for the new administration, said ministers in the West Bank had already assumed their posts and only two more ministries in Gaza remained for handover in the coming days.

But he said the new Cabinet’s ability to function would be harmed by Israeli curbs on officials wishing to cross Israel to travel between the two separated Palestinian territories and called for international help to press Israel to remove the ban.

“Restrictions on movement are an attempt to undermine the work of the unity government. It was the first declared step by Israel but it is a tough one and it will affect the mission of ministers so we call on the international community to compel Israel remove these unjust measures,” Bessaiso said.

Setting a policy in line with US and European Union demands, the Western-backed Abbas said his new administration would continue to honour agreements and principles at the foundation of a peace process with Israel.

“The whole world has welcomed the new government, which includes neither Fateh nor Hamas members, and only Israel has stood against [it],” Bessaiso said.

The United Nations on Tuesday also lauded the formation of the Palestinian unity government and the European Union voiced preparedness to work with it.

Still, while no longer in government, Hamas will maintain ultimate power in Gaza. The unity government will tackle the day-to-day problems of Palestinians only. Decisions about diplomacy and security will be taken elsewhere, and no further peace negotiations are on the horizon.

Long overdue elections

Acting on the agreement with Hamas, Abbas called on the Central Elections Committee to “immediately” begin preparations for the elections. A presidential election was last held in 2005 and a parliamentary vote in 2006.

Political rifts between Hamas and Abbas’ more secular Fateh faction worsened in 2007, when Hamas ousted Fateh from the Gaza Strip, and have repeatedly scuppered any chance of holding elections.

“I hope you [election committee] coordinate with the government, which will use all its capabilities to help prepare for a fair and free general election,” Abbas said in a statement.

In an effort to regain trust among Gaza residents and the West Bank, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al Hamdallah asked his Cabinet members to enable a gradual return of government employees in Gaza to their jobs. In 2007, Abbas’ administration ordered them to boycott Hamas control of their offices.

The roughly 20,000 government employees appointed by Hamas since 2007 will now be vetted by a committee before they can be added to the new government’s payroll. Meanwhile, 20,000 Hamas security men will have their posts reviewed by an Egyptian-led Arab security committee.

AMMAN — Jordanians and truck drivers who were stuck at the Libyan-Egyptian border on Wednesday passed the Salloum border crossing into Egypt and are on their way to the Kingdom, the Foreign Ministry said. 

The ministry’s spokesperson, Sabah Al Rafie, said on Wednesday that the Egyptian authorities issued an exceptional decision to allow two Jordanian families to pass through the Salloum border with Libya. 

She explained that the Jordanian embassy in Cairo provided the necessary documents to facilitate their entry. 

Al Rafie also called truck drivers to avoid the Libyan-Egyptian borders, citing the current state of insecurity there.

TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI, Libya — Gunmen in Libya shot dead a Swiss national working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), fired a grenade at the prime minister’s office and tried to kill a renegade general in a series of attacks on Wednesday.

Anarchy is spreading in the North African oil-producing country where turmoil and political infighting have reigned since the 2011 uprising that ousted Muammar Qadhafi. A plethora of armed militias operate at will beyond state authority.

In the east outside Benghazi, ex-general Khalifa Haftar survived an assassination attempt. In Sirte, a central city where the government has little control, gunmen killed a Swiss ICRC official. And in the capital Tripoli, gunmen fired a rocket propelled grenade at the office of Prime Minister Ahmed Miitig.

“The Swiss head of a sub-delegation of the ICRC was shot dead by unknown gunmen while he was leaving a meeting in Sirte with another two ICRC members,” said Salah Uddin, spokesman for the ICRC in Libya.

Nobody was hurt when the grenade hit the kitchen on the same floor as Miitig’s office, an aide said, noting that the premier was not there at the time.

Miitig was elected by parliament last month in a chaotic vote that many lawmakers disputed. Outgoing Premier Abdullah Al Thani has refused to hand over power, saying he wants to wait for a legal ruling on whether Maiteeq’s election was legitimate.

In an attempt to reinforce his authority, Miitig took over the premier’s office on Monday night, backed by a police escort.

Hours before the attack there, a suicide bomber blew up a sports utility vehicle packed with explosives at retired general Haftar’s base in Benghazi, according to his spokesman, Mohamed Al Hejazi, and army officials.

Haftar survived but four men from his force were killed and 23 others suffered minor wounds, a medical source said.

Speaking later on television, Haftar said he had been treated with minor wounds in a hospital. “I am well,” he told Al Oula station. “There will be a strong response,” he said, without elaborating.

His campaign to rid Libya of Islamists has triggered heavy fighting in Benghazi in the past few weeks, killing dozens of people.

Qadhafi’s one-man rule and years of unrest since have left Libya with few functioning institutions and no credible army to impose state authority on former fighters and Islamist militants who often use military muscle to make demands on the state.

TEHRAN — A quarter of a century after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s death, Iran remains at a crossroads in navigating its way out of economic and diplomatic troubles, against a backdrop of political infighting.

Wednesday marks 25 years of the Islamic republic without its founder, the charismatic spiritual and political leader who remains ever-present on bank notes, portraits in public offices and countless posters.

Khomeini is held in awe by the revolutionaries for toppling a US-backed dynasty, with the stated mission of ridding Iran of what he deemed Western decadence and poisonous corruption in government.

The Islamic state that was founded in 1979 on a vision of establishing a Muslim democracy lives on, but the country faces daunting challenges, analysts say, as it grapples with major economic pain.

Dina Esfandiary, an Iran expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, believes Tehran’s regional influence has taken a beating, with support for its traditional ally Syria, which is engulfed in a civil war, proving exhausting.

Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas is also distancing itself, she said.

Iran’s power in the modern Middle East stemmed from its steady economic growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the fruit of policies implemented by two presidents before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Accused of economic mismanagement, Ahmadinejad, who was in office from 2005 to 2013, wrenched backwards. His populist policies and distribution of Iran’s wealth took the form of cash handouts in a controversial scheme that slashed subsidies.

That practice severely weakened the economy, Tehran-based analyst Saeed Laylaz said, prior to the strengthening of a harsh sanctions regime by world powers designed to coerce Iran into curbing its disputed nuclear drive.

“With no strong economy comes no geopolitical influence,” Laylaz said.

When Khomeini died in 1989, the country was grappling with the aftermath of an eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, during which Iran’s economy was isolated.

Tehran was also trying to find a role on the international stage after descending on a path hostile to Western countries, particularly the United States, aggravated by dismay at their military support for Baghdad.

Today, President Hassan Rouhani faces a similar task in mending fences with the world after eight years of Ahmadinejad’s destructive foreign policy, which drove Iran into diplomatic wilderness and close to the edge of war.

Rouhani says the solution to Iran’s woes lies in bolstering a stagnant economy, which is struggling with double-digit unemployment and inflation, by resolving the decade-long nuclear standoff and proving to the world that Tehran’s atomic programme is peaceful.

“Inflation has steadily slowed down and Rouhani’s technocratic government is... tackling the task at hand. But he will need to secure significant sanctions relief for his policies to work,” Esfandiary said.

Iran’s self-declared moderate president must also overcome domestic critics of reconciliation with the West and those who view any sort of compromise on what Tehran says are its nuclear rights as a red line.

In addition to navigating frictions within the multifaceted political system, Rouhani is also treading a fine path in implementing a promise of more social freedom, which helped him win the presidency last summer.

While Khomeini rejected the technical means of Western civilisation, Khamenei has warned against the “invasion” of Western cultural values, which he says pose a threat to those of the Islamic republic.

BEIRUT — US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Lebanon’s politicians on Wednesday to overcome their “deeply troubling” stalemate and elect a new president to help respond to the damaging fallout of civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Kerry, on a brief visit to Beirut, also announced more aid to help Lebanon and other countries in the region struggling to cope with millions of Syrian refugees.

“Lebanon’s security for years has been of paramount concern to the United States, and that is why I have to say that the current political stalemate here in Lebanon is deeply troubling,” he said after meeting Prime Minister Tammam Salam.

Lebanon has been without a president since May 25, when Michel Sleiman’s six-year term expired. Attempts by politicians to pick a successor have foundered on longstanding divisions exacerbated by tensions over the Syrian war.

Political rifts have been accompanied by sectarian violence including bombs, gunbattles and rocket fire. Salam’s government also faces widening budget deficits and a growing strain on services such as electricity, water, health and education from more than 1 million Syrian refugees in a country of 4 million.

“Lebanon needs and Lebanon deserves to have a fully empowered, fully functioning, complete government. We hope the Lebanese parliament will select a president quickly,” Kerry said.

The presidency, allocated to the Maronite Christian community under Lebanon’s sectarian division of power, is one of the three main political offices alongside the prime minister, a Sunni Muslim, and the parliamentary speaker, a Shiite Muslim.

The war in Syria has split Lebanon’s Christians just as it has divided Muslims. Shiite Hizbollah — a powerful militant group and political force in Lebanon — has sent fighters to reinforce Assad, a fellow ally of Shiite Iran, while some Lebanese Sunnis have joined Syria’s mainly Sunni rebels.

Aid for refugees

Kerry announced more than $290 million in additional aid for UN agencies and non-governmental organisations working with the nearly 3 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

Some $51 million of the funds, the largest chunk of the aid, will go to helping Lebanon which hosts the highest concentration of refugees as a percentage of population in the world.

Unlike some of Syria’s other neighbours, Lebanon does not have formal refugee camps, leaving many families to find refuge within host communities.

More than $35 million of the additional funds will go to helping refugees in Jordan, $15 million to Turkey and the same amount to Iraq, while $4.5 million will support Egypt, the State Department said.

The power of the presidency, once the leading political office in Lebanon, was eroded under the accord which ended Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, handing greater influence to the government and prime minister.

A State Department official had said earlier that Kerry would renew a commitment by the United States to develop the capabilities of the Lebanese army to secure its borders and restore calm in parts of the country.

Lebanon has only two neighbours: Israel, with which it remains formally in a state of war, and Syria, where the conflict between President Bashar Assad and rebels is now in its fourth year.

Kerry visited Lebanon a day after Syria held a presidential election widely expected to deliver a sweeping victory for Assad and a third seven-year term in office. Syrian officials have already described the predicted victory as vindication of Assad’s three-year campaign against those fighting to oust him.

“With respect to the elections that took place, the so-called elections, the elections are non-elections, the elections are a great big zero,” Kerry said.

“They are meaningless, and they are meaningless because you can’t have an election where millions of your people don’t even have the ability to vote, where they don’t have the ability to contest the election, and they have no choice.”

DAMASCUS (AFP) — Bashar Assad has been re-elected Syria’s president with 88.7 per cent of the vote after a poll labelled a farce by rebels fighting to overthrow him, whose outcome was never in doubt.

The other candidates in Tuesday’s vote — Hassan Al Nuri and Maher Al Hajjar — won 4.3 per cent and 3.2 per cent, respectively, parliamentary speaker Mohammad Al Lahham said.

“Congratulations to the Syrian people for their choice and decision,” he said. “Syria has its leader and its captain, who will lead the ship to the shore of safety and security.”

But Omar Abu Leyla, a rebel spokesman in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, said “the Syrian people have made their decision, and will continue in their revolution, whatever the cost.

“After three years, it is impossible to go back, until we get our demands, which were freedom and justice,” he told AFP via the Internet.

Minutes after the announcement, state television showed people taking to the streets in Damascus to celebrate. Many chanted, some with the Syrian flag wrapped around their shoulders.

Celebratory shots fired by Assad supporters killed at least three people in the capital and wounded dozens more, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The election was held only in the roughly 40 per cent of Syrian territory controlled by the regime, and among expatriates.

An official said turnout reached 73.42 per cent, or 11.6 million people out of 15.8 million called on to vote.

Pro-government newspaper Al Watan said millions had voted, “defying terrorism and its mortars, rockets, car bombs and suicide attackers, to prove the legitimacy” of Assad for a third seven-year term.

However, opposition activists were quick to claim people had voted out of fear not conviction.

Earlier, Assad “thanked all the Syrians who turned out en masse to vote”.

The US said it was a “disgrace” to hold an election in the midst of a three-year-old war that has killed more than 162,000 people and driven millions from their homes.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in Beirut on Wednesday, described the vote as a “great big zero”, and urged Assad allies Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s militant group Hizbollah to end the war.

With millions having fled their homes and the country, Kerry announced $290 million in humanitarian aid for Syria and countries hosting refugees.

“The conflict is the same, the terror is the same, the killing is the same.”

But opposition activists have criticised Washington for failing to take decisive action over the conflict, despite its repeated calls for Assad to step down.

And in a swipe against the administration, former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford told CNN he had retired last month after almost three years working with the opposition because he could no longer defend US policy.

“We have been unable to address either the root causes of the conflict in terms of the fighting on the ground and the balance on the ground, and we have a growing extremism threat,” Ford said.

He was alluding to jihadists in rebel-held areas, whose presence has made Washington reticent to arm moderate rebels.

But Ford said moderates “need to get the tools they must have to change the balance on the ground, at least in some localities.”

He also said rebels are now not just fighting the regime, but also jihadists.

Meanwhile, Assad ally Moscow, which welcomed the election as a step towards a political solution, called for the speedy appointment of a new UN envoy.

Lakhdar Brahimi, who brokered two rounds of abortive peace talks between Damascus and the opposition this year, stepped down on Saturday saying his mediation had reached stalemate.

He had infuriated Damascus by criticising Tuesday’s election as an obstacle to his peace efforts.

Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin, who has just taken over the Security Council’s chairmanship, said it would be “fundamentally flawed” to ignore the need for a quick successor to Brahimi to relaunch peace efforts.

“We believe that, after just two five-day rounds of talks, to say that things are so stalemated that there is no need to continue those negotiations, this is not to us entirely persuasive.”

Moscow, which sent observers to monitor the election, has infuriated the West by four times vetoing draft Security Council resolutions in defence of its Damascus ally.

For his part, Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth tweeted: “Syria scrapes bottom in quest for legitimacy pulling in election observers from N(orth) Korea, Iran, Russia and Zimbabwe.”

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations on Tuesday welcomed the formation of a new Palestinian unity government that came about thanks to a reconciliation deal between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ and Hamas Islamists.

“The secretary-general welcomes, on the basis of assurances provided both publicly and to the United Nations, the announcement on June 2 by President Mahmoud Abbas of the formation of a government of national consensus headed by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

“The secretary general [Ban Ki-moon] takes note of the renewed assurances yesterday by President Abbas that the government will continue to abide by those commitments of recognition of Israel, non-violence and adherence to previous agreements,” he said.

Washington’s announcement that it would work with the new Palestinian government has set the United States on a new collision course with Israel, which has shunned the new Cabinet in the Palestinian territories.

Setting a policy in line with US and European Union demands, the Western-backed Palestinian leader Abbas said his administration would continue to honour agreements and principles at the foundation of a peace process with Israel.

Hamas, which advocates Israel’s destruction, has run the Gaza Strip since seizing the territory from Abbas’ Fateh forces in a brief civil war in 2007. 

Numerous reconciliation efforts, largely brokered by Egypt, have failed over power sharing.

“The United Nations stands ready to lend its full support to the newly formed government in its effort to reunite the West Bank and Gaza,” Dujarric said.

He added that UN chief Ban “counts on a constructive approach by regional stakeholders, and hopes the international community will not relent in its support to the development of Palestinian economy and Israeli-Palestinian peace”.

President Barack Obama’s administration said on Monday it plans to work with and fund the new Palestinian unity government, and Israel immediately voiced its disappointment with the decision also criticised by some US lawmakers.

The European Union has also expressed a willingness to work with the new Palestinian government.