Comment: The following report appeared in an Arab news site. Notice how they frame the discussion. The EU made a mistake not talking to the more "moderate" side of Hamas. Huh? There is no moderate side. Their PR is relentless with the lie called "occupied Palestinian territories." Finally, the tone of the piece is that it is a foregone conclusion that the EU erred in not talking to Hamas and it declared another lie, Fatah is secular-best do your homework before making this statement.Of course, the Arab media knows that Western reporters and readers will not do the necessary research and thus will believe what is written!

Italy also urges talks with Haniya's government
Stop boycotting Hamas: Britain's lawmakers
. DUBAI (Agencies, AlArabiya.net)
Britain should speak directly with the Middle East's most prominent radical groups, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee said in a report released Monday.




. British diplomats should engage talks with moderate elements of these groups and step up talks with Iran and Syria because their influence can no longer be denied, the all-party group of lawmakers said.

The report urged that dialogue with Syria and Iran must be a part of regional negotiations saying Damascus -- long accused of destabilizing Lebanon -- may be changing for the better.

Discussing Hamas, the report criticized Britain's role in the international boycott of the radical group as counterproductive, and said that pursuing a policy where Britain deals only with the more secular Fatah group would further jeopardize peace."Given the failure of the boycott to deliver results, we recommend the government should urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas," the committee of lawmakers said.The committee said Britain had erred in enforcing the embargo against Hamas even after the group agreed in February to form a unity government with Fatah.

The sustained boycott of the Palestinian government, due to Hamas's presence in it, meant the effort at unity had been "highly likely to collapse", the report said.They also recommended that Britain press Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is backed by the West, to hold negotiations with Hamas to re-establish "a national unity government across the occupied Palestinian territories".It said Britain's former prime minister, Tony Blair, should personally engage with Hamas to help reconciliation in his new role as envoy for the Quartet of Middle East mediators -- the United States, the European Union, the United States and Russia.A similar approach was suggested to deal with Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's outlawed opposition party.

The lawmakers said Hezbollah's role in Lebanon was harmful and the scale of the Brotherhood's Islamist agenda was uncertain, but the power and influence of the two was undeniable and therefore speaking with them unavoidable.The committee also called for a new approach to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. It reaffirmed the goal of a two-state solution but said the U.S.-backed "road map for peace", drawn up in 2002, "has largely become an irrelevance".

Prodi urges dialogue with Hamas. Meanwhile the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi also expressed the need for dialogue with Hamas to help the Islamist group develop politically."Hamas exists. It's a complex structure that we should help to evolve -- but this should be done with transparency," Prodi said at a conference on Sunday in central Italy.Although the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has sought to isolate Hamas in Gaza, Prodi said he had already warned Olmert and Abbas against seeking peace with only some Palestinians.Last month, Israel's ambassador to Italy expressed indignation after Italy's foreign minister said Hamas should not be isolated since it had won democratic elections.

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