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RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas defended his unity deal with Hamas in talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today after US and Israeli threats to shun a coalition government.
Pledging to continue to "probe the diplomatic horizon", Rice travelled to the occupied West Bank to meet the moderate Palestinian leader just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said prospects for peace had dimmed.
Rice, Olmert and Abbas are all due to meet in Jerusalem on Monday, but no joint news conference is planned -- a sign that expectations are low.
The deal that leaders of the Islamist Hamas movement reached in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, this month with Abbas's Fatah faction ended weeks of internal fighting that killed more than 90 Palestinians.
But Western officials said the agreement fell short of meeting policy terms set by international mediators.
A top security adviser to Abbas, Mohammed Dahlan, acknowledged the government's programme "doesn't meet the Quartet's conditions", but said Abbas explained to Rice his priority had been to end fierce fighting between the factions.
"She respected our position that we want to stop internal fighting," Dahlan told Reuters. "Her position was also clear that they will not deal with this government".
But he also said Rice repeated her public statements that the United States would withhold judgment until the government had been formed.
Rice's spokesman, Sean McCormack, described her 2-1/2 hour meeting with Abbas as a "friendly, open and good conversation."
The United States, while publicly supportive and committed to maintaining contacts with Abbas, has been growing increasingly impatient with him and is piqued by the deal he reached with Hamas.
Olmert says no cooperation
Rice later met Olmert, who told his cabinet on Sunday that President Bush had agreed in a telephone call to boycott the planned unity government if international terms were not satisfied.
The Quartet of Middle East mediators, comprising the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, has called on any Palestinian government to recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by interim peace accords.
"A Palestinian government that does not accept the Quartet's conditions cannot receive recognition, and there will not be cooperation with it," Olmert said before his meeting with Rice.
Palestinians had hoped the power-sharing pact, which contained a vague promise to "respect" previous peace deals, could persuade Western donors to restore direct aid cut off to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas won election a year ago.
The unity deal could widen a rift within the Quartet over how to deal with the Palestinian government and whether to resume limited assistance, analysts said.
At the start of her meeting with Abbas, Rice said she hoped Monday's trilateral talks would be "an opportunity to understand the current situation and commit and recommit to existing peace agreements".
Abbas said they would explore "the horizon for the peace process" at Monday's talks, as well as discuss the new Fatah-Hamas coalition.
Senior Palestinian officials said Abbas replied angrily to a US official who warned him on Saturday that Washington would have no contact with unity government ministers, including Fatah members, if the Quartet's terms were not met.
"President Abbas ... shouted (at the official), saying: 'You are placing pressure on me. I have internal pressure -- the pressure is unbearable. The only alternative to this agreement is civil war'," one Palestinian official said.
- REUTERS
