Abbas Calls for Hamas Cabinet

Fatah Youth Demand Leader's Resignation

A protester holds a Fatah badge and a Palestinian flag next to a burning car inside the courtyard of the parliament building in Gaza City. Thousands of young activists protested the party's poor showing in Wednesday's elections. (By Emilio Morenatti -- Associated Press)

JERUSALEM, Jan. 27 -- Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said Friday that he would invite the radical Islamic group Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union and the United States, to form the next cabinet amid increasing unrest in his own Fatah party over his leadership.

Speaking to reporters, Abbas acknowledged that Hamas, known formally as the Islamic Resistance Movement, had the right to form the cabinet after its resounding victory in parliamentary elections this week. Ismail Haniyeh, the top Hamas candidate, said he would meet with Abbas in the Gaza Strip over the weekend to begin talks on how to incorporate the party into a political system it has long opposed.

"Up until now we haven't asked anyone to form a government," Abbas said. "But we've negotiated with some of the factions and, of course, we will ask the party that has received the most votes to do so."

Fatah's electoral defeat, which ended nearly four decades of dominance, has focused criticism on Abbas's leadership, corruption in his government and the largely fruitless peace program he has pursued with Israel. A member of Fatah's founding generation, Abbas is now facing a growing rebellion from the party's younger ranks even as he remains president of the Palestinian Authority, with broad powers to set policy and manage the security services.

Several thousand young Fatah activists, angry over the party's trouncing in the first parliamentary elections in a decade, took to the streets of Gaza City to demand his resignation. The men passed Abbas's Gaza residence, though he is currently in the West Bank city of Ramallah, and continued to the parliament building, where they stormed the lobby, smashed windows and set fire to several cars in a protest lasting hours.

Mohammed Dahlan, one of only 43 Fatah candidates to win a place in the 132-seat legislature, calmed the demonstrators, some of them armed, with a pledge that the party's leadership would change. Later, in the city of Khan Younis, gunmen traded fire after Fatah activists tore down Hamas campaign banners. A Hamas supporter and a member of the Palestinian security services were wounded.

Fatah had dominated the parliament since its establishment a decade ago, and its members still fill out the senior ranks of the Palestinian Authority. But it is now being forced to cede a large portion of its power to Hamas, whose presence in the Palestinian government could undermine the authority's lifeblood foreign aid, most of which comes from the United States and Europe.

President Bush said Friday that the United States would cut aid to the Palestinian government unless Hamas abolished the militant arm of its party and stopped calling for the destruction of Israel. "And if they don't, we won't deal with them," Bush said in an interview aired on "CBS Evening News." "The aid packages won't go forward. That's their decision to make, but we won't be providing help to a government that wants to destroy our ally and friend."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would raise the issue of funding the Palestinian Authority at a meeting in London on Monday with representatives of Russia, the United Nations and the European Union.

The announcement coincided with an Israeli diplomatic effort to persuade foreign governments to isolate Hamas's new elected leadership.

Israel's acting foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who called several European counterparts Friday, told reporters that she urged them to send a message that "elections are not a whitewash for terror." She said she told them that "Hamas cannot be a partner of Israel," and that the Palestinian Authority, if led by the group, "also cannot be a partner."

U.S. and European diplomats are prohibited from having contact with designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas. Over the past year, however, European diplomats have met with Hamas members elected to municipal councils, drawing Israeli protests.