Abbas ready to open new page with Hamas

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GAZA CITY, Jan 1 (AFP): Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Monday that he was ready to "open a new page" with Hamas if the Islamist movement gave up its control of the Gaza Strip.
But violence soon broke out in the southern Gaza Strip, with at least five people killed and 40 wounded in clashes between Fatah loyalists and Hamas police.
"I call on those who carried out the putsch... to open a new page," Abbas told Fatah officials gathered to mark 43 years since the secular party first declared itself an armed Palestinian resistance movement.
Cooperation between the Palestinians' two main parties should be based "on a partnership in the heart of the fatherland and around the struggle for its liberations," he said.
But he reiterated that no talks with Hamas can take place unless the Islamists give up the power they seized in Gaza in mid-June by routing pro-Fatah forces after a week of deadly street battles.
"I consider this appeal as an initiative in the name of all the Palestinian people," he said.