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Hamas presented its cabinet to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday after the group failed to persuade any rival factions to join a government Israel and the United States have pledged to shun.

Hamas's plan to appoint party loyalists to top ministerial posts, in the absence of coalition partners, was an early signal of the success of Israeli and US efforts to isolate the Palestinian election victor sworn to Israel's destruction.

Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh gave the Hamas cabinet list to Abbas in Gaza as reporters looked on.

He said he had handed Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas a 24-member cabinet including one woman and one Christian.

"I met Brother Abu Mazen (Abbas) and officially submitted to him the list of the cabinet," Haniya told a joint news conference with the moderate Palestinian Authority president.

"The president is going to study the make-up of the government and its programme," he said, adding that the atmosphere of the meeting had been "positive".

The cabinet included 14 ministers from the West Bank and 10 from Gaza, he said.

Officials from Abbas's Fatah faction said he would not try to block parliamentary approval of the government but would issue a letter detailing his reservations about its policies.

Moderate parties had come under US pressure to shun an administration led by Hamas, which has rejected demands that it recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept interim peace accords - conditions for continued Western aid. Hamas, which eclipsed the long-dominant Fatah faction in the January 25 poll, completed its cabinet just over a week before Israel's own general election on March 28.

At US-sponsored talks near Tel Aviv on Sunday, Israel and the Palestinians decided to make new arrangements for basic foodstuffs to enter Gaza to ward off a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, said Erekat, who took part in the meeting.

Copyright Reuters, 2006


Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2006


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