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Abbas: EU ministers 'alarmed'
RIVA DEL GARDA, Italy (Reuters) -- European Union foreign ministers said they were alarmed by the resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. Speaking at a meeting of EU foreign ministers, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the 15-nation bloc was "deeply worried by the serious risk of dangerous instability at the head of the Palestinian executive." The ministers earlier discussed ways of reining in the Palestinian militant group Hamas following its claim of responsibility for a recent suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem which ended the truce declared by several militant groups. Senior Palestinian officials said Abbas, battling to comply with a U.S.-backed "road map" plan for peace with Israel, had resigned in frustration at being blocked in a power struggle with President Yasser Arafat. (Full story) Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh said the United States and Israel bore some responsibility for the crisis, saying Abu Mazen (Abbas's alternative name) had been given "the kiss of death" when they decided to deal only with him and not with Arafat. "We (the EU) have all along agreed that this U.S.-Israeli policy of trying to exclude Arafat was very dangerous for Abu Mazen, and that there was a risk it could lead to Abu Mazen's fall. That is what we have seen now," she told reporters. But Lindh also said Arafat was partly to blame: "Arafat's role in this is clearly negative and it is obvious Arafat must accept the continuation of the peace process." Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, one of the original architects of the road map, said Abbas's resignation would be a severe setback for the peace process. He said it was imperative for the Quartet -- the mediation group made up of the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- to meet the Palestinians and the Israelis. "It is not fun to go to a quartet in New York if suicide bombs are going off," he said, adding the same applied to the Israeli retaliation attacks. "Just calling such (a meeting) could calm things down," he said. Italy, which holds the rotating EU presidency, says it wants the Quartet to meet in New York on September 22. Diplomats said that in their talks on Hamas, ministers might stop short of adding its political wing to their blacklist of banned terrorist organizations, which would lead to EU states freezing its assets and possibly prosecuting its activists. The bloc blacklisted Hamas's military wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, last year, but is divided over whether to ban the political wing, France arguing it could play a role in peace efforts and provides social services to Palestinians. Denmark's Per Stig Moeller said he was convinced the group's political wing should be banned. "I have seen in the electronic media Hamas's political leader calling several times for a break with the truce and if a political leader can give military orders then I cannot really see where one starts and the other begins," he told reporters.
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