Abbas says talks for govt have reached deadlock

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said today that talks to achieve a national unity government aimed at ending an international aid boycott have reached a “dead end”.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, standing alongside Abbas at a joint press conference in the West Bank city of Jericho, said the US hoped to accelerate efforts to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to extend the scope of a recently declared cease-fire between the two sides.

Rice also said the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories, including what she called “humiliations”, must be eased.

In a gesture of support for Palestinian aspirations, Rice said any future Palestinian state should be “viable” and “contiguous” and said no actions should be taken now to prejudge the outcome of a final peace deal.

That was an apparent reference to Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.

Abbas said he lamented the difficulties surrounding efforts to form a joint government between the Palestinians’ current Hamas rulers and Abbas’s own moderate Fatah Party. Such a government is seen as key to lifting an international aid boycott of the Palestinian Authority.

“We have discussed our efforts to form a national unity government. We have exerted efforts we have worked in many directions but unfortunately we have hit a dead end,” Abbas said.