Algerian President Bouteflika plays mediator in Palestinian conflict: Hamas representative says

The Palestinian organization Hamas representative, Oussama Hamdane, yesterday took the veil off an Algerian initiative led by its president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to broker a deal between the different Palestinian sides, insisting on the total confidence placed on the head of the government to reach a consensus between conflicting fractions.

Hamas representative, who paid a visit to Algeria on the invitation of the Algerian party “The Movement for Society of Peace” to take part in the solidarity week for the liberation of Gaza, declared that he took the opportunity of being received by the government Abdelaziz Belkhadem to formally request on behalf of his movement an Algerian mediation referring to the role played by the Algerian diplomacy to settle hot issues notably in the Lebanese civil war.

As to the Arab League Summit recently held in Damascus, M Hamdane said that the Arab position is stand is still unclear especially that the Arab leaders didn’t show their position in case of an Israeli refusal to the Arab initiative , known as “Sanaa declaration” to pursue dialogue noting that Israel will never comply with the Arab initiative.

He went on saying that there are two ways , according to his movement’s point of view , to put into effect the Arab League’s decision, the first one consists in going beyond void slogans to deal with the Arab common interest as to the second one, deals with the Arab social and economic situation adding that the Arab leaders failed to raise the Arab league from a forum of dialogue to a structured body for the unification of the Arab states.

Expressing himself about the Saudi Arabia initiative to convince some Arab states not to take part in Damascus summit, M Hamdane declared that there is a latent crisis in the Arab world and that the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Syria added fuel to fire.