Region

CAIRO — Egypt’s likely next president, retired military chief Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi, says ties with the United States and the West will improve after elections this week. 

He is confident that a strong show of public support will prove that Egyptians wanted the ouster of the country’s Islamist president, which threw relations between Egypt and the US into their worst strains ever.

But it will likely be a troubled road towards warming the chill between Cairo and Washington. Egypt’s security forces have waged a fierce crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist backers of ousted president Mohamed Morsi, as well as against secular-minded youth activists.

Asked in a recent TV interview whether the Brotherhood will no longer exist under presidency, Sisi replied in the affirmative: “Yes. Just like that.”

Sisi, considered certain to win presidential elections taking place Monday and Tuesday, has made clear he wants better ties — but on his terms. 

The retired field marshal has also raised worries in Egypt and the United States over potential restrictions on freedoms and civil rights, with his tough line against dissent as he pushes for stability he says is needed to repair the economy.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, the director of the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy, described the Egyptian-US relations as in a moment of reflection because direction is not clear.

Both sides “know their relations are important. They value the cooperation... but publicly they are reluctant to engage”, Wittes said.

Sisi removed Morsi on July 3 after protests by millions demanding that the Islamist leader go — and since then, supporters of the move have furiously rejected the idea that it was a military coup, saying the ouster was the people’s will.

After much deliberation, Washington decided not to declare it a coup, a step that would have required a cut-off in aid. Still, after hundreds of Morsi’s protesting supporters were killed in an escalating crackdown in August, the United States withheld millions of the more than $1.5 billion in aid a year that it provides Egypt — mostly to the military.

Also, Washington left the post of its ambassador in Cairo vacant after the departure of Anne Patterson — now an assistant secretary of state — who was fiercely criticised by many Egyptians who accused her of supporting the Brotherhood.

Since Morsi’s ouster, Egyptian media have been enflamed with anger at the United States, accusing it of backing the Brotherhood, raising conspiracy theories about the United States working with the Islamists to divide Egypt.

Sisi has avoided that sort of rhetoric. 

In interviews with Egyptian media in the past weeks, he has said he understands the US has laws that require it to take the steps. He has also insisted Washington must understand why he and the military acted, both in Morsi’s ouster and the ensuing crackdown, in which hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested.

“We are giving them the chance to see,” he said of the Americans in one TV interview. “We always tell them... ‘See us with Egyptian eyes. Live our reality’.”

He added that the election will show the US and the Europeans that the Egyptian people are behind him. “The relations will only return to warmth when the people go in millions to vote.”

Sisi has also put forward a common cause for better relations, warning of a rise of militancy in Egypt, Syria and Libya. 

“The international community must cooperate to deal with terrorism, and we are with them,” he said. Otherwise, “they will have problems”, he added, pointing to European citizens fighting in Al Qaeda-inspired groups in Syria’s civil war or in Libya.

Security cooperation is one area where the alliance has continued. Egypt has been working closely with the US and with Israel in its offensive against Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula, who have stepped up a campaign of bombings and other attacks since Morsi’s ouster. 

In April, Egyptian intelligence chief Mohammad Farid Tohamy visited Washington for talks with Secretary of State John Kerry.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy also met with Kerry in Washington, a trip seen as a sign of easing tensions. 

“It’s like a marriage. It’s not a fling; it’s not a one-night affair,” Fahmy said of relations with the US. “it’s going to take time... Any marriage has its hiccups.”

During the visit, Kerry certified to Congress that Egypt is upholding its peace treaty with Israel and strategic commitments to the US, freeing up $680 million in assistance. The Pentagon also released a hold on the delivery of 10 Apache helicopters to Egypt to help its military combat extremists.

But the $650 million are in jeopardy after Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, raised objections on the Senate floor. Kerry has not yet certified that Egypt is meeting the democratic standards required for the remainder of the $1.5 billion in US assistance to be sent.

Kerry said Washington has made progress in its democratic transition but that it needs to address “disturbing” problems. 

“We really are looking for certain things to happen that will give people the sense of confidence about this road ahead,” he said. “It’s actions, not words that will make the difference.”

Washington-based Middle East Institute scholar Mohamed Elmenshawy said that “Washington is leaving the door half open”.

“They are watching for free elections, they are watching for signs of reconciliation knowing that keeping pressure on political Islam won’t work on the long run,” he said.

Wrangling over the US ambassador has also been a sore point. Patterson departed soon after Morsi’s overthrow, and the Obama administration initially suggested Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, to fill the Cairo post. 

But it didn’t nominate him after objections from Egyptian officials. Egyptian media had been depicting Ford as having a pro-Islamist agenda.

It was months until the administration finally put forward a nominee, earlier in May — Stephen Beecroft, the current ambassador in Iraq.

“Finding an alternative was not high” on the administration’s agenda, said Jon Alterman, a prominent Egypt expert who directs the Middle East programme at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. 

“The US won’t be begging Egyptian government to have an ambassador. If you don’t want Ford, we will wait.”

“There is a growing sense that Egypt is not embracing liberal democratic principles... that government efforts to crack down will actually lead to violence, polarisation and increase the problem of extremism rather than end it,” said Alterman.

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels and government forces have agreed to a truce in an opposition-held area near the central city of Homs, activists said Saturday.

The ceasefire, which started on Friday, comes as troops loyal to President Bashar Assad are trying to seize as many rebel-held parts of major urban centres as possible ahead of the June 3 presidential election.

Assad is widely expected to win a third, seven-year mandate, but opposition activists have criticised the vote as being illegitimate because it is taking place amid a raging civil war. 

Syria’s conflict, which began as an uprising against Assad’s rule, is now in its fourth year and has killed about 160,000 people, activists say.

The truce in Waer came as Assad thanked Russia, one of his top backers, for its support on the international scene at a time when “the West is trying to subdue countries that don’t accept its hegemony”.

The state-run SANA news agency said Assad spoke during a meeting Saturday with Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin in Damascus.

Russia and China on Thursday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution referring the Syrian crisis to the International Criminal Court for investigation of possible war crimes.

It was the fourth time the two used their veto power as permanent Council members to deflect action against Assad’s government.

SANA quoted Razogin as saying that the West’s policy towards Syria and the upcoming June presidential election is “immoral and does not take into consideration the interests of the Syrian people”.

The truce in Waer, which lies across the Orontes River from Homs, is meant to give the warring sites a chance to negotiate an agreement that will allow the rebels to leave the area without being attacked, or later arrested.

A Syrian activist who uses the name Thaer Khalidiya said the truce went into effect on Friday and was to last for three days, until Sunday night.

Rami Abdel Rahman, of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and the Hizbollah channel Al Manar, which supports Assad, also reported the ceasefire.

It is similar to a ceasefire agreed on in early May that ultimately allowed for the evacuation of hundreds of rebels from opposition-held parts of old Homs.

Assad’s forces have been combining bombings of besieged, opposition-held areas with negotiated ceasefires and evacuation deals to reclaim rebel-held territory.

Waer has been under a government blockade for about six months that has prevented food and fuel from entering the area, where tens of thousands of civilians live.

Khalidiya, the activist, said that although rebels were quite strong in Waer, they were under pressure from the residents to leave the area.

He said many of the local residents feared they would suffer deprivation and hunger, akin to what civilians in rebel-held parts of Homs experienced, if the siege in Waer continued for much longer.

Pro-government forces control the Syrian capital, Damascus, and recently assumed control of all of Homs. They have also stepped up their assault in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, to take back rebel-held areas.

But government-held areas are not entirely secure. A car bomb killed two people in an upscale part of Damascus on Saturday.

On Thursday night, a mortar attack on Assad’s supporters gathered at an election campaign tent in the southern city of Daraa killed 39 people and wounded 205 others, Syrian state TV said Friday.

DUBAI — Iran on Saturday said the latest UN report on its nuclear activities, which calculated it had slashed its nuclear stockpile by around 80 per cent, proved its atomic programme was peaceful.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in its quarterly report on Friday that Iran had reduced its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium gas under an interim pact with world powers.

It also said it had started to engage with a long-stalled IAEA investigation into suspected weapons research.

A steep cut in uranium gas — a relatively short technical step away from weapons-grade material — is among concessions demanded by the United States and its Western countries in return for limited easing of economic sanctions against Tehran.

“The report is an affirmation of Iran’s claim to peaceful activities,” nuclear spokesperson Behruz Kamalvandi told the official news agency IRNA.

“No deviations have been seen in these activities.”

Western countries have long suspected the Islamic republic of seeking nuclear weapons capability and Tehran’s cooperation with the IAEA is a test of any progress in the current talks with the six world power known as P5+1.

The latest round of negotiations failed to make much headway last week, raising doubts over the prospects for a breakthrough by the late July deadline.

BEIRUT — Syria’s air force struck a besieged rebel-held town Saturday as UN and Red Crescent workers distributed aid there, a monitor and activists said.

“Two air strikes hit Douma during a visit of a delegation of the United Nations to the town’s outskirts,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Activists said one of the strikes hit an area adjacent to a warehouse where aid is being stored, but that aid was distributed nonetheless.

Douma is in the Eastern Ghouta area of Damascus province, where rebels are under siege and residents suffer terrible humanitarian shortages.

Activist Hassan Takieddin said 400 aid parcels were distributed “to the whole of Eastern Ghouta. That is very little”.

The UN’s visit to the town is the first since March, he said.

Meanwhile, state news agency SANA said four people were killed and nine wounded in eastern Damascus, blaming “terrorists”, the regime’s term for rebels.

A police source cited by the agency said the blast was caused by a device comprising 30 kilogrammes of explosives.

In Aleppo, troops evacuated wounded comrades and detainees from the central prison that had been under rebel siege for more than a year until Thursday, said the observatory.

The wounded soldiers and prisoners were transferred to a hospital in western Aleppo, the group added.

The army, backed by pro-regime militia and Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah, broke the rebels’ siege on the prison Thursday.

The developments come as the observatory said the death toll from a Thursday evening attack by rebels on a campaign rally in Daraa for President Bashar Assad’s re-election bid had risen to 37.

“Among them were 19 civilians, including four children, 12 members of the popular defence committees [pro-regime militia] and six soldiers,” Observatory Director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

The attack also wounded dozens, said the observatory, which had initially reported a death toll of 21.

Assad faces two little known challengers in next month’s vote and is widely expected to clinch a third seven-year term despite the civil war, which has killed more than 160,000 people.

The election will only be held in regime-controlled areas, and has been dismissed by the opposition and its Western backers as a farce.

BAGHDAD — Throngs of Shiite Muslims converged on a shrine in north Baghdad on Saturday for annual commemoration rituals under heavy security after a string of deadly attacks in the Iraqi capital.

Much of the city was on lockdown for the climax of the rites to mark the death of a revered figure in Shiite Islam, with Baghdad’s security forces looking to deter Sunni militant groups which often target Iraq’s majority community.

Several major roads were closed off and a wide variety of vehicles barred from the streets, as security forces also relied on aerial cover and sniffer dogs.

Organisers say millions of pilgrims were expected to visit the shrine in the Kadhimiyah neighbourhood of north Baghdad between Saturday and Sunday, when the commemoration rituals are to climax, though the figure could not be independently verified.

For days worshippers from across Baghdad, and the rest of the country, have been walking to Kadhimiyah, site of a shrine dedicated to Imam Musa Kadhim, the seventh of 12 revered imams in Shiite Islam, who died in 799 AD.

Sunni militants regard Shiites as apostates and, as in previous years, multiple attacks have targeted worshippers in the run-up to the Imam Kadhim commemorations.

Three bombings in the capital, including two carried out by suicide attackers, on Thursday killed 21 people, while mortar fire on Friday struck a district adjacent to Kadhimiyah, killing three more.

The unrest comes as Iraq grapples with a protracted surge in bloodshed that has left more than 3,700 people dead so far this year and fuelled fears the country is slipping back into all-out conflict.

Friday’s deadly violence struck in the capital and the restive northern province of Nineveh, leaving 17 people dead and 25 others wounded, security and medical officials said.

Mortar fire in north Baghdad killed three people, while two men were shot dead in the west of the capital.

The mortar rounds slammed into the Zahra neighbourhood adjacent to Kadhimiyah.

In Nineveh province, north of the capital, four more people were killed on Friday, including two senior police officers, officials said, while attacks elsewhere north of Baghdad killed eight others.

Violence has surged in the past year to its highest level since 2008, while anti-government fighters control an entire city a short drive from Baghdad and parts of another.

The latest attacks come as Iraq’s political parties jostle to build alliances and form a government after April polls that left incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki in the driver’s seat to remain in office for a third term.

The authorities have trumpeted security operations against militants, saying on Friday that they killed 35 more insurgents, and blame external factors such as the civil war in neighbouring Syria for the surge in violence.

Analysts and diplomats, however, say the Shiite-led government must do more to reach out to disgruntled minority Sunnis and undermine support for militancy.

TRIPOLI, Libya — A renegade general leading a military offensive against Islamists and their allied militias dominating Libya’s political scene on Saturday welcomed street rallies in support of his campaign, saying the demonstrations have given him a “mandate” to fight terrorism.

Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s remarks came a day after thousands took to the streets in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, the restive eastern city of Benghazi and other cities waving Libyan flags and chanting his name.

“People of Libya, you have given your orders. There is no going back on accepting the mandate and facing up to the challenge,” Haftar said in a statement broadcast on Libya’s Alahrar TV.

Since launching his campaign eight days ago, Haftar has said he wants to crush Islamist militias backed by Libya’s Islamist-dominated parliament, and impose stability after three years of chaos following the ouster and death of dictator Muammar Qadhafi in the 2011 civil war.

Haftar has described his offensive as a battle against terrorism. In Saturday’s broadcast, he said his forces will not return to their barracks until terrorism is defeated, and called on Libyans to keep up their support for his campaign.

Since Qadhafi’s ouster and slaying, Libya has been plagued by a weak central government, lawlessness and out-of control militias that have challenged a weak police and army.

Haftar’s spokesperson, Mohammed Hegazi, called on troops who have not yet joined the campaign dubbed “Operation Dignity” to do so within 48 hours or “face penalties”. He did not elaborate.

Also Saturday, a military jet — apparently flown by a pilot who joined Haftar’s forces — soared over the eastern city of Darna, known as a stronghold of an extremist militia.

The plane did not attack, said a militiaman on the ground, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to talk to media.

Haftar’s base remains in Benghazi, where he first started his campaign and where militants have attacked and killed government officials, security members and alleged Qadhafi loyalists.

The city is now divided between Haftar’s forces and the powerful militias. A volley of missiles fired during an exchange between the two sides hit a residential area late on Friday, wounding a man and his wife, hospital official Fadia Barghathi said.

Barghathi also said moderate cleric Saleh Aharaka was killed late Friday with several bullets to the chest and head. Aharaka was a known critic of radical groups.

Later Saturday, a spokesperson for Haftar’s troops — dubbed the National Libyan Army (NLA) — warned the parliament against trying to convene again, insisting the chamber has been disbanded.

“Any attempt to meet or convene the parliament anywhere will be considered a legitimate target,” said Jamal Habeel, the NLA spokesperson.

Last week, fighters allied with Haftar stormed and ransacked the parliament building in Tripoli, and declared the house disbanded.

Days later, some Islamist lawmakers met at an alternative location but failed to approve a new government. The assembly was to meet again on Sunday.

BEIRUT — Lebanese parliamentarians failed on Thursday in a last effort to elect a successor to President Michel Sleiman before his term expires, leaving a political vacuum as the country struggles to cope with spillover from Syria’s civil war.

Parliament’s fifth attempt to vote for a new president was abandoned when deputies failed to reach a quorum on Thursday, 48 hours before Sleiman is due to leave the presidential palace.

The deadlock stems from deep divisions, worsened by sectarian tensions over Syria’s conflict, between Lebanon’s two main political blocs: the Hizbollah-led March 8 coalition which supports Syrian President Bashar Assad, and the rival March 14 camp which backs Assad’s opponents.

“We are heading for a vacuum in the presidential palace,” parliamentarian Khaled Al Daher told reporters after Thursday’s session which was boycotted by March 8 deputies because of the failure to agree on a consensus candidate.

The deadlock comes as Lebanon struggles to cope with more than one million refugees who fled neighbouring Syria and now form up to a quarter of the population, straining the economy and upsetting Lebanon’s delicate sectarian balance.

Most of the refugees, like the rebels fighting to topple Assad, are Sunni Muslims. Assad, from Syria’s Alawite minority which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, is backed by Shiite Hizbollah and its patron Iran.

Lebanon’s 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 parliamentary speaker — a Shiite.

“The country is heading into the unknown and nobody knows whether this vacuum will be brief or prolonged,” March 14 parliamentarian Ahmed Fatfat told Reuters. “We have entered a new and dangerous phase”.

Political standoff

Despite Fatfat’s dire warning, most Lebanese have become accustomed to protracted political stalemate whenever the time comes to choose a new parliament, government or president.

Salam took a year to find support for the government he formed in March, while parliamentary elections which were due last summer were postponed until this November, stymied by the same standoff holding up the choice of new president.

In the end, Lebanese politicians have relied on agreement between outside patrons — Saudi Arabia for March 14 and Iran for March 8 — to resolve differences.

But Syria’s war has polarised regional players just as it has Lebanon’s domestic factions, and Lebanon is currently just one problem in a multitude of Middle East crises.

“The Lebanese think that as soon as the Saudis and Iranians sit down at the negotiating table, the third party will be Lebanon. That’s absolutely not correct,” said Nabil Bou Monsef, a columnist at Lebanon’s Al Nahar newspaper, arguing that regional powers have other priorities.

In the absence of an elected successor, Sleiman’s powers will pass to Prime Minister Tammam Salam’s government, which is also supposed to prepare for a parliamentary election later this year.

But Bou Monsef said the presidential vacuum, which he predicted could drag on as long as a year, might well affect the timing of the parliamentary vote too. “Another extension of the parliamentary term looks certain,” he said.

VIENNA — A UN atomic watchdog report due on Friday is likely to confirm that Iran is curbing its nuclear activities as agreed with world powers in a landmark accord last year, diplomatic sources said.

They said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would probably verify in a monthly update that Iran is living up to its part of the interim agreement struck in November, designed to buy time for talks on a long-term deal.

The update “will show continuing compliance”, one Western diplomat said on Thursday.

The report is also expected to include information about Iran’s agreement this week to address two issues in a long-stalled IAEA investigation into suspected atomic bomb research by Tehran, which denies any such work.

The undertaking could advance the research the IAEA is trying to carry out, and may also help Iran and six world powers to negotiate a broader deal to end a dispute that has raised fears of a new Middle East war.

But Western capitals, aware of past failures to get Iran to cooperate with the IAEA, are likely to remain sceptical until it has fully implemented the agreed steps and others to clear up allegations of illicit atomic work.

The IAEA-Iran talks are separate from those between Tehran and the six powers — United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia. But they are complementary as both focus on fears that Iran may covertly be seeking the means and expertise to assemble nuclear weapons, which it denies.

US officials say it is vital for Iran to address the IAEA’s concerns if Washington and five other powers are to reach a long-term nuclear accord with Iran by a self-imposed deadline of July 20. But the Islamic state’s repeated denials of any nuclear bomb aspirations will make it hard for it to admit to any wrongdoing in the past without losing face.

Keeping ‘diplomatic process alive’

Under last year’s deal — made possible by the June election of pragmatist Hassan Rouhani as Iranian president after years of increasingly tense relations with the West — Iran scaled back its most sensitive work in exchange for some sanctions easing.

Diplomats and experts say it will be much more difficult to agree the terms of a final deal, as Iran and the powers remain far apart on the permissible scope of its nuclear programme, especially regarding its uranium enrichment capacity.

US and Iranian officials said little progress was made in the latest round of negotiations, which ended in Vienna on Friday. They will meet again in June as they step up their push to try to clinch a long-elusive agreement.

Rouhani said in Shanghai on Thursday that the talks had reached an important and tough juncture, but a deal was still possible by the July deadline.

Gary Samore, until last year the top nuclear proliferation expert on US President Barack Obama’s national security staff, predicted it would be “very difficult” to achieve that goal.

But, he said in a speech, “both sides have a strong interest to keep the diplomatic process alive because neither wants to return to previous cycle of escalation of increased sanctions and increased nuclear activities with increased risk of war”.

BEIRUT — President Bashar Assad’s troops broke a year-long rebel siege of Aleppo’s main prison on Thursday, cutting a main insurgent supply line and vowing to press on and recapture the whole of Syria’s biggest city.

State television showed soldiers inside the prison after they routed Al Qaeda and other Islamist forces who had tried several times in recent months to break into the jail and free thousands of prisoners.

The military gain comes 12 days before an election widely expected to deliver a landslide victory — and seven more years in power — for President Bashar Al Assad, whose forces have been cementing his control over the centre of the country.

A military statement said the fighting around the prison, about 8km northeast of Aleppo, had cut a supply line linking the rebel-dominated rural hinterland with the contested city.

“It represents a heavy blow to these groups that were using the countryside as a base to target Aleppo and its population,” the statement said.

The military command was determined to “hit the terrorist groups with an iron fist and restore security and stability to Aleppo city and every inch of the country.”

Assad’s forces and rebels have been fighting for two years in Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub before the start of its three-year civil war, and the countryside around it.

Weary defenders

Television pictures from inside the prison complex showed dozens of bearded and weary soldiers, who had held out against 13 months of rebel siege, standing behind grey sandbags and celebrating the arrival of the relief troops.

They also showed prisoners, men and women, behind bars in long rows of cells.

Rebels, including fighters from Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, have tried repeatedly to storm the prison, breaching its outer walls with huge bombs but failing to take full control.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said 3,000 inmates were held at Aleppo jail, including Islamists and other political prisoners as well as common criminals.

It said the air force continued to bombard rebels near the prison with barrel bombs on Thursday, a third day of heavy fighting after they launched an offensive on Tuesday to push back the insurgents.

The Britain-based, anti-Assad Observatory, which monitors the violence in Syria through a network of activists and medical and military sources, says more than 162,000 people have been killed in the civil war, which grew out of protests against Assad’s rule in March 2011.

Assad’s forces, backed by Shiite fighters from Iraq and Lebanon’s Hizbollah, have pushed back rebels around the capital Damascus and the city of Homs, strengthening his hold over a chain of cities running along Syria’s northsouth axis.

But rebels have made gains recently near the southern city of Deraa, and control a swathe of territory from rural Aleppo in the north down through the farmlands and oil producing regions to the east.

RAMALLAH/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Palestinian premier Rami Hamdallah is to head the consensus government to be formed under a deal with Hamas to end seven years of rival administrations in the West Bank and Gaza, an official said Thursday.

“The government is nearly ready, and Rami Hamdallah will be prime minister,” the official close to the reconciliation negotiations told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “informed Mr Hamdallah yesterday [Wednesday] that he would head the government”, the official said.

Hamdallah is the prime minister of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. Hamas has a rival prime minister in Gaza — Ismail Haniyeh.

Hamas “had no objection” to the decision, said Bassem Naim, an adviser to Haniya.

A senior Fateh official, Azzam Al Ahmed, is due in Gaza on Sunday to “finalise consultations” on the government, Naim said.

On April 23, Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, dominated by Abbas’ Fateh Party, signed a surprise reconciliation deal aimed at forging a unified administration.

Under the deal, the two sides were to form an “independent government” of technocrats, headed by Abbas, paving the way for long-delayed elections.

Hamas, which does not recognise Israel, has ruled Gaza since it expelled Fateh after a week of deadly clashes in 2007.

The April reconciliation agreement incensed Israel, putting the final nail in the coffin of faltering US-led peace talks.

The new government will still need the approval of the Hamas-dominated Palestinian parliament, which was elected in 2006 before the deadly fighting of the following year, Haniya said last week.

Both the European Union and the United States have said repeatedly that they will have no dealings with any government that involves Hamas until the Islamist group renounces violence and recognises Israel and past peace agreements.

Meanwhile, the European Union has banned the import of poultry and eggs from Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, including annexed East Jerusalem, Israeli news website Walla reported on Thursday.

The 28-nation bloc informed the Israeli agriculture ministry that it recognised its veterinary supervision only within Israel’s pre-1967 borders and that settlement poultry produce, therefore, did not meet public health regulations for import, the website said.

An EU official in Tel Aviv confirmed the report and said the ruling was issued “in the spirit” of guidelines which came into force in January prohibiting dealings with settlement-based firms and bodies.

The settlements are illegal under international law and their continued expansion in the face of EU and US criticism was a prime factor in the collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“This issue, like many other trade issues that come up in the framework of trade relations between Israel and the European Union, will be addressed within the framework of the ongoing professional dialogue between the parties,” Walla quoted an agriculture ministry spokesperson as saying.

The ministry declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

“It should be noted that poultry and poultry-related products from the settlements account for under 5 per cent of all such products in Israel, so that the new European guideline will not have much practical impact from an economic standpoint,” Walla reported.