March 18, 2007	Sunday	Safar 28, 1428

JERUSALEM, March 17: Israel on Saturday rejected contacts with the new Palestinian unity government and urged the West to maintain its boycott against a cabinet that has not recognised the Jewish state’s right to exist.

“Israel will not recognise or work with this new government or with its members,” government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.

She spoke shortly after prime minister designate Ismail Haniya unveiled before parliament the programme of the new coalition cabinet that unites his Islamist Hamas movement with the secular Fatah of president Mahmud Abbas.

“The new government continues along the clear line of the preceding one. Unfortunately, there is no recognition of Israel, there is no recognition of past accords with the Palestinian Authority,” Eisin said.

“And not only is there no renunciation of terrorism, there is a clear call by the new prime minister to what he calls the right of resistance.

“We expect the international community to firmly stick to its demands concerning the three conditions” for lifting the aid freeze imposed on the Palestinian government a year ago when Hamas came to power, she said.

The so-called Quartet of major players in the Middle East peace process – the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States – had demanded that a new Palestinian government renounce violence and recognise Israel and past peace deals for the aid flow to resume.

But Israeli officials have voiced fears that, out of concern for the unprecedented havoc wreaked on the Palestinian economy, some Quartet members will now end the aid freeze.

“We feel that the wind is beginning to change among certain European countries who seem ready to restart their aid, which would constitute a victory for Hamas,” a senior foreign ministry official told this reporter on condition of anonymity.

“The question is to know whether we give money to terrorism or to peace,” Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres told public radio.—AFP