Abbas calls peace meet 'historic opportunity'

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Sunday hailed an "historic opportunity" for peace as his people marked the third anniversary of the death of his iconic predecessor Yasser Arafat.
"We will work for the success of the international conference that we see as a historic opportunity to turn a new page in the history of the Middle East," Abbas said in a speech before tens of thousands of people in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah.
The United States is expected to host an international peace meeting in Annapolis, Maryland later this year aimed at reviving the Middle East peace process after a seven-year hiatus since Arafat's last round of negotiations.
Abbas vowed to hold fast to Palestinian rights amid fears by some Palestinians, including the Islamist Hamas movement, which rejects the meeting, that he will make too many concessions to Israel in the talks.
"Our strategic choice is peace by holding onto our national rights, which are guaranteed to us under international law," Abbas said.
His remarks came amid reports that negotiations ahead of the meeting -- for which there is still no fixed date -- have stalled following disagreements over a joint document that is expected to form the basis of future talks.
"We have difficulties. That's why we have negotiations to overcome them," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.
Palestinians have called for a document that addresses the core issues of the conflict -- borders, the fate of Jerusalem, and the issue of refugees -- while Israel prefers a looser declaration based on the 2003 roadmap plan.
The internationally drafted roadmap calls on Israel to withdraw from some West Bank settlements in exchange for Palestinians taking over responsibility for security, but has made no progress in the past four years.
"We hope that the Quartet will shoulder its responsibilities because it is supposed to be the judge on the first phase," Erakat said, referring to the group made up of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States.
Abbas has vowed to continue through negotiations the struggle for a Palestinian state his predecessor led for nearly four decades, but on the third anniversary of Arafat's death Palestinians are more divided than ever.
The commemoration of Arafat's mysterious death in a Paris hospital on November 11, 2004 sees the Palestinian Authority which he set up in 1994 in control of only scattered, autonomous areas of the occupied West Bank.
The Gaza Strip is now controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas, which opposed Arafat's policies during his lifetime and seized power in mid-June after routing security forces loyal to his successor.
On Sunday Abbas once again called on the movement to hand back control of the volatile coastal strip and reverse what he calls its "military coup," accusing Hamas of betraying Arafat's legacy.
"You will not hide the truth of what you have created, the establishment of an isolated entity controlled by a faction that rejects democracy and the values at the heart of our modern struggle," he said.
Abbas vowed that the "seeds of democracy that Abu Ammar first planted on the beaches of Gaza, and Khan Yunis, and Rafah, remain and will bloom again," referring to Arafat by his commonly used nomme de guerre.