Pulling away from an agreed US and European policy, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was considering inviting the newly victorious leaders of the radical Palestinian Islamic group Hamas to Moscow to discuss solutions to the conflict in the Middle East.
He spoke during a day of chaos and violence in the Gaza Strip, where three armed Palestinians were killed as they attacked Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen kidnapped an Egyptian diplomat.
Speaking at a joint news conference in Madrid with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Putin rejected claims that Russia should join with the EU and the US in declaring Hamas, which won the Palestinian parliamentary elections on Jan. 25, a terrorist organization.
"I am profoundly convinced that burning bridges in politics is the easiest thing to do, but it has no perspective, it has no future," he said. "Preserving our contacts with Hamas, we are willing in the near future to invite the authorities of Hamas to Moscow to carry out talks."
Hamas responded favorably to the offer on Thursday.
"If we receive an official invitation to visit Russia, we will visit Russia," said Ismail Haniya, a senior Hamas leader, according to a report from Gaza City.
not with the program
But Israeli officials said Putin's offer conflicted with the ground rules for negotiations that Russia signed on to at a meeting in London last month of the so-called quartet on the Middle East, which also includes the US, the EU and the UN. Those called on Hamas to renounce violence, disarm militias, recognize Israel and respect previous agreements with it, and implied that international aid would be cut off if changes were not made.
In New York, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, warned that any weakness in dealing with Hamas would "legitimize terror," according to the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman.
At a lunch meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the ambassadors of all five Security Council permanent members, Livni said, "Any show of weakness or hesitation on the part of any country and especially a member of the Security Council would only act to legitimize terror and give Hamas a feeling that maybe the international community was weakening," Gillerman reported.
A senior State Department official said that the administration was surprised and irritated by Putin's remarks, but that Russia had assured the US that there would not be any senior-level contacts with Hamas. Asked about Putin's statement, the official said, "Frankly, it doesn't help."
A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mikhail Kamynin, said Russia would adhere to the approach agreed upon in London. Later on Thursday, Russia's special Middle East envoy, Aleksandr Kalugin, said Moscow hoped to bring Hamas "up to international requirements" and draw it into dialogue with Israel.
While Putin seemed to catch the Bush administration and others by surprise, it was not the first time he had voiced such an opinion. In a news conference late last month, after the Palestinian elections, he said Russia had "never regarded Hamas as a terrorist organization."
two killed
Meanwhile, before dawn on Thursday, Israeli soldiers killed two armed Palestinians who attacked the Erez crossing on the Gaza-Israel border, the military said. Israel has been permitting 5,000 Palestinian workers to commute to Israel each day through the crossing, and virtually all pass through Erez.
About half of the workers had gone through Erez by 4am when the flood of laborers suddenly stopped, Israeli officials said. Israel security officers called their Palestinian counterparts, but did not receive a coherent explanation, they said.
Also see story:
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
RSS