Fatah says Hamas refused Palestinian elections

Secretary General of the revolutionary council of the Palestinian Fatah movement, Amin Maqbul said on Monday ?that Hamas, during a meeting on Sunday night, rejected their proposal for holding new Palestinian elections. At the meeting, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party proposed elections to maintain the legitimacy of political institutions as both sides failed to agree on other primary reconciliation issues. Maqbul said in a statement that Fatah proposed to initially hold legislative, ?presidential and national assembly votes, but Hamas discarded the idea and said all issues of reconciliation between the two rival movements must be addressed simultaneously. Since the dissolution of the last Palestinian unity government in June 2007 by Abbas, Fatah has dominated the Palestinian government in the West Bank while Hamas has led a separate government in the Gaza Strip. With repeated rounds of talks and reconciliation agreements failing to reunite the the two sides under a single government, delegations of Fatah and Hamas, met on May 14 in the Egyptian capital of Cairo as the last obvious effort towards national reconciliation, and agreed on a roadmap of general elections within 3 months and setting up a national reconciliation government. Hamas has always rejected elections before outstanding controversial issues are resolved, including the reform of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the security services' structure, social reconciliation and the formation of a transitional unity government.