Fayyad Won't Run For Presidential Elections
Supports President Abbas' Call For Dialogue
Rules Out An Agreement With Israel By The End Of This Year.

"I have a very strong feeling, or should I say fully confident, that a political settlement will hot happen this year but international effort should continue to sustain the probability of reaching an agreement through making every step to cease Israel's settlement activities," said Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Fayyad is expected to attend a three way meeting between himself, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who is due in the region next Sunday.

Meeting with representatives of the local press in Ramallah on Tuesday, the prime minister said there are three major priorities that need to be addressed before anything else. They are the cessation of Israel's settlement policy; changing Israel's security behavior and allowing freedom of access to goods and people throughout the Palestinian territories and between the Palestinians territories and the outside world.

Speaking of the current internal problem in the Palestinian territories and mostly of the situation in the Gaza Strip, Fayyad said that two conditions need to be met by all parties involved in order to get out of the current internal impasse. All Palestinian factions, he said, should agree on forming a caretaker government that would stay in power until new elections are held and all Palestinians should support an immediate end to armed anarchy while adhering to political pluralism. He admitted that the Palestinian National Authority needs Arab assistance to end this weird situation and therefore "we welcome every Arab hand that helps us solve this problem."

Fayyad revealed that between the years 2006 and 2007 some 50,000 Palestinians have left the country while ten times of this figure are ready to leave once conditions are ripe for them to leave. He noted that the fact that every one had a gun of his own and used it in whichever way he wanted had ultimately led to this number of Palestinians leaving their country. "This armed anarchy brought us damage more that it brought to anybody else. That is why we insist on one law, one gun rule. Political pluralism is necessary and can be handled through elections. Dialogue is always the means to settle differences between various political groups."

Speaking of dialogue, Fayyad praised the initiative declared by President Abbas a week ago and said it came "to show how serious the president is in his effort to restore unity to our homeland and to fight the phenomenon of illegitimate rule in the Gaza Strip."

Fayyad said he would not run for presidential elections and praised the success of the Palestine Investment Conference that was held recently in Bethlehem. He said that other conferences are being contemplated because "we are thinking in various directions in order to sustain the achievements of the Palestine Investment Conference as an annual event to be held regularly once every year or every two years at the latest." Sub-conferences on a variety of topics were also contemplated, including a conference in Nablus and another one in Chile for Palestinians living abroad with emphasis on information technology and other fields, said Fayyad.

"We all have our responsibilities towards our brothers in the Gaza Strip as same as towards our people in the West Bank," said Fayyad adding that "the most important matter we want to achieve now is to lift the siege on Gaza, which we consider a major challenge." "We demand the immediate reopening of the border crossings based on the initiative we declared by which the PNA would take full control of the border crossings," he said stressing that 60 percent of the PNA current expenditures are spent in the Gaza Strip to cover salaries and social aid. He pointed out that the siege on the Gaza Strip is so hard that neither the Palestinian National Authority, nor the United Nations or non-governmental bodies are able to implement any projects in the Strip.

Fayyad promised the minute the border crossings are open the PNA would act "as aggressively in the Gaza Strip as it has been doing in the West Bank in order to address the immediate needs of those who are badly in need for assistance." In the West Bank, he said, there are more than 600 different projects, of which 150 have been already implemented. The intensity of work in the Gaza Strip, he promised, will be almost identical to that in the West Bank if not more.