RAMALLAH, Jan 13: Palestinian civil servants agreed to end a months-old strike on Saturday, amid signs that feuding factions were edging closer to the long-elusive goal of a national unity government.

The deputy prime minister of the Hamas-led government, Nasseredine al-Shaer, announced that the deal to end the strike was the “first of a number of accords on matters linked to the formation of a government of national unity that should be announced in the near future”.

He said that a “deal on internal security is now being drafted.” The news that 80,000 state employees would return to work, after a four-month-old strike, came as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the region in a bid to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

On Friday, it was disclosed that mediators were working to arrange a meeting between Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and the Damascus-based leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, that one of them said could lead to a national accord being signed as early as next week.

But Abbas, after talks in the Jordanian capital with King Abdullah II, played down the chances of a meeting soon with Meshaal.

“We must first settle the situation on the internal front,” he said. “No meeting or date has been set.” Abbas said he expected dialogue between the rival Palestinian factions to resume on Sunday and continue for two weeks.

Only hours before Rice landed in Israel, meanwhile, Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya accused the United States and Israel of pushing his people towards civil war.

Haniya, whose Islamist movement is engaged in a deadly power struggle with Abbas's Fatah party, made the claim as he called on the two sides to halt the feuding that has claimed more than 30 lives in the past month.

“The American and Israeli policies seek to push the Palestinian people towards civil war and internal conflict so that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes a Palestinian-Palestinian conflict,” he said in a televised address from his office in Gaza City.

In a statement several hours later, Hamas called on members to stop all revenge actions and provocations in the field and in the media, spokesman Ismail Raduane told reporters.—AFP