US 'to unblock' Palestinian aid

The US will lift a 15-month embargo on aid to the Palestinians once a new emergency government excluding Hamas is sworn in, a US diplomat has said.

US consul-general in Jerusalem Jacob Walles said there were no obstacles to re-engaging with the new government, which would have full US support.

Palestinian President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is expected to swear in a new prime minister on Sunday.

He sacked the Hamas-led government after clashes left more than 100 dead.

On Saturday, violence between the rival factions spread from Gaza to the West Bank, as Fatah gunmen stormed the Hamas-controlled Palestinian parliament building in Ramallah.

Quartet backing

Mr Welles met President Abbas on Saturday and said afterwards that he expected announcements in Washington about "our assistance and about the financial regulations" early next week.

"There won't be any obstacles, economically and politically, in terms of re-engaging with this [emergency] government," he told Reuters news agency.

The quartet of Middle East peace mediators - the US, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union - has also said it backs the decision to dissolve the Hamas led-administration.

Western nations imposed sanctions on the Palestinians after Hamas, considered a terrorist organisation by the US and EU, won elections in January 2006.

Hamas has denounced the move to form an emergency administration as illegal.

Last week, it ousted Fatah from Gaza after a week of fierce fighting.

On Saturday, Fatah gunmen seized the parliament building in Ramallah in the West Bank.

Second deputy speaker Hassan Khuraishah, an independent, told the BBC he had been beaten up as he tried to prevent Fatah gunmen from raising their flag.

In a show of strength, Fatah supporters paraded around Ramallah, firing weapons into the air and chanting "Hamas out".

Almost all Hamas politicians and prominent supporters in Ramallah have either fled or gone into hiding.

Fatah supporters also took over the Hamas-controlled legislative council in Nablus.

Fleeing Gaza

Meanwhile, hundreds of Fatah supporters are reported to have been fleeing Hamas-controlled Gaza by land and sea.

Gaza, and the much larger West Bank, are just 45km (30 miles) apart, but correspondents say they now look poised to function as two separate territories.

President Abbas declared a state of emergency when he sacked the government of Ismail Haniya on Thursday.

Mr Abbas has said he will rule by presidential decree until conditions are right for early elections.

His nominee for prime minister, Salam Fayyad, is a former World Bank economist, whose impending appointment Israel has welcomed.

Benazir’s Return to Power Would Trigger Anarchy, Says a US Writer

A Jewish American writer has warned that if former prime minister Benazir Bhutto returns to power, it ‘would almost certainly trigger a return to anarchy and open the door to a Taliban-style fundamentalist coup’.In a letter to the editor published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Arthur Herman ridiculed Ms Bhutto’s assertion that ‘more than two-thirds of Pakistanis are distinctly moderate’ in their religious views.The letter was a retort to the PPP chief’s article published in the newspaper.Mr Herman argued that President Musharraf ‘has not only been a good ally for America, he has also been good for Pakistan’.Recalling Ms Bhutto’s stints in power, Mr Herman says ‘as prime minister of Pakistan, Ms Bhutto proved to be one of the most incompetent leaders in the history of South Asia and was dismissed in Nov 1996 by Pakistan’s president for nepotism, corruption and mismanagement’.“During her chaotic administration in the mid-1990s, scores of people were being murdered in the streets of Karachi every day,’’ he said.Mr Herman said he believed ‘the current hatred of Gen Musharraf has little to do with the nature of his government. His real crime is that he is a Muhajir — Indian Muslims who fled to Pakistan in 1947’.The writer observed ‘even for western-educated Pakistanis like Ms Bhutto, the sight of a common Muhajir like Gen Musharraf as Pakistan’s supreme power holder is intolerable. Pushing for his fall has little to do with a return to democracy’.Mr Herman contended in the letter that the president had not only been a good ally for America, he had been good for Pakistan, too.At considerable risk to himself, Mr Herman said, Gen Musharraf had been trying to rein in the ‘forces of jihadism and end foreign support for fundamentalist madressahs’.“The same appeared true of Iranians in 1979 as well. But when Iranian liberals and human rights activists convinced the US to withdraw support for the shah, just as today’s Pakistani liberals are urging us to do to Gen Musharraf, the result was Ayatollah Khomeini’.Saying that President Musharraf’s ‘government has hardly been perfect’, Mr Herman nevertheless feels that ‘compared with the Maliki government in Iraq, its record is impressive, especially in fostering a safe, relatively open and secular Pakistan’