By Michelle Nichols - September 19, 2006
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said she would tell Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a meeting on Monday that any unity government he negotiates with Hamas must meet international conditions for lifting a freeze on foreign aid.
Those conditions are that any Palestinian government must renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept interim peace deals Israel signed with the Palestinians.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni meets U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (not pictured) in New York, September 18, 2006. (REUTERS/Chip East)
Livni said it would be her second meeting with Abbas since the Islamist group Hamas came to power in March and sparked a freeze on most foreign aid to the Palestine. Livni was also seeing U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Monday as part of a series of contacts on the region on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
"The last thing that the region, our region, the Middle East, needs is another terrorist state," Livni told reporters, adding that Israel supports strengthening Abbas, whose Fatah movement wants a two-state solution with Israel.
"The best way to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas is to demand the implementation of these requirements and not to compromise with them," she said.
The U.N. Security Council meanwhile firmed up plans for a meeting on Thursday to discuss a plea by the 22-nation Arab League to resuscitate the Middle East peace process.
The meeting will be a public session where the council`s 15 members will be represented by their foreign ministers or possibly even more senior officials, diplomats said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was arriving in New York later on Monday and has not yet decided whether he will participate, a Palestinian diplomat said.
CONDITIONS ON AID
The conditions on Palestinian aid were set by the Quartet of peace mediators -- the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia -- as conditions for ending a freeze on most foreign aid to the Palestinians.
Abbas and ruling Hamas have begun talks on a unity government in a bid to lift sanctions, but aides to Abbas said on Sunday the president froze talks after Hamas said it would not accept interim peace deals with Israel.
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said talks were only delayed while Abbas is in New York.
Livni said it would be "unacceptable" to recognize a unity government if Hamas has not changed its ideology.
Livni said she would also discuss with Abbas the case of an Israeli soldier captured in June by Gaza militants who demand the release of Palestinian prisoners and a halt to Israeli attacks.
Before her meeting with Livni, Rice repeated U.S. demands that the soldier -- as well as two others abducted by Hizbollah guerrillas to Lebanon -- be released unconditionally. She was expected to raised the case again when she met Abbas later in the day.
(Additional reporting by Sue Pleming in New York and irwin Arieff at the United Nations)
