Cheney says Hamas-Fatah deal unlikely

By Ari Rabinovitch

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Monday he did not believe Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would agree to reconcile with Hamas until the Islamist group gave up control of the Gaza Strip.

Cheney ended a three-day visit to Jerusalem and the West Bank on Monday aimed at bolstering Israel-Palestinian peace talks, which Washington hopes will lead to a deal on Palestinian statehood by January 2009.

His comments came a day after Fatah, led by the Western-backed Abbas, and its rival Hamas, which opposes peace talks with Israel, issued a declaration agreeing to resume dialogue under a Yemeni fence-mending initiative.

"My conclusion from talking with the Palestinian leadership is that they have established preconditions which would have to be fulfilled before they would ever agree to a reconciliation, including a complete reversal of the Hamas takeover of Gaza," Cheney told reporters.

After meeting Cheney on Sunday, Abbas said Israeli settlement expansion, roadblocks in the West Bank and assaults against militants were holding up peace talks relaunched at a U.S.-led conference in Annapolis, Maryland, last November.

Israel is under increasing U.S. pressure to take steps to ease restrictions on Palestinian travel and trade. But Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday that while Israel would try to ease some travel restrictions within the West Bank, it was not ready to commit to removing checkpoints.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to use a visit to the region later this week to encourage both sides to keep their commitments under a 2003 "road map" peace plan.

"I think it's fair to say that we are still in the process of getting each side to focus on what they need to do, and get out of the mode of pointing the finger at the other guy," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.