PLO endorses Abbas plan for referendum

The decision by the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to endorse his referendum plan came despite fierce opposition from Hamas, which argued more time was needed for talks to resolve deep differences with Abbas's own Fatah faction.

Abbas yesterday gave the Hamas government until the end of the week to accept a manifesto implicitly recognising Israel or face a referendum on the issue.

Hamas, an Islamic group, swept to power in January elections and has been locked in a power struggle with Abbas ever since. It rejects the document penned by Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Abbas had set a Tuesday deadline for Hamas to accept the manifesto on Palestinian statehood. A referendum, with opinion polls suggesting most Palestinians support the document, would also be seen as a confidence vote on the Hamas government.

Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said an exact date for the referendum would be declared within 48 hours -- still leaving open the possibility of a last-minute compromise. Polling would take place exactly 40 days after the announcement, Abu Rudeina added.

There was little expectation, however, that Hamas is about to change its tune, although a new poll showed the vast majority of Palestinians both back Abbas's call for a referendum and intend to vote in favour of a document first drawn up by a cross-party group of senior militants held in Israeli prisons.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said a further round of talks would be "the only way to resolve our differences."

"We cannot accept that the dialogue has failed. We cannot decide this after just one or two additional meetings as there are many strategic questions to be addressed," he said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Gaza City.

The document at the centre of the referendum calls for a national unity government, an end to attacks in Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel on land conquered by the Jewish state in 1967.

Such a blueprint would undercut Hamas's long-time platform of refusing to recognise Israel or disavow the use of violence even within the Jewish state's borders, as well as bounce it into a coalition government with Abbas's Fatah faction, which it trounced in a January parliamentary election.

In a bid to end growing financial and security crises, Abbas had served Hamas last month with a 10-day deadline which expired at midnight to agree on solving the crisis and accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, or he would put the statehood initiative to a referendum.

The Hamas government's hardline stance has led it to be boycotted and starved of aid from the EU and US, bringing the Palestinian Authority to the brink of financial meltdown.

A power struggle between the Fatah-controlled security services and Hamas has also degenerated into deadly clashes in the Gaza Strip.