[New York Times] Helene Cooper - After a meeting with Secretary of State Rice in Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas refused Tuesday to publicly commit to restarting suspended talks with Israel, frustrating Bush administration officials who contended that he was giving Hamas a tactical victory by allowing it to hijack Arab-Israeli peace negotiations. Abbas did not say that he would never return to talks. He just refused to say when, and seemed to relish a new role of standing up to the U.S. and Israel.
2008-03-05 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive