Nabil Shaath, a member of Fatah's central committee and delegation, said the Palestinian national dialogue would kick off in Cairo next Thursday under Egypt's auspices. He said the meeting would last one day and an agreement would be reached on the reconciliation committees that would meet in the first week of March in Cairo. Ismail Radwan, leading figure of the Hamas movement, said Hamas was keen to hold a successful dialogue. However, he stressed detainees had first to be released in the West Bank and instigative media campaigns had to be stopped. He said an understanding on these campaigns had already been reached during the meetings previously held between Fatah and Hamas in Cairo. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged the Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip not to surrender to what he described as Arab pressures to reach a truce with Israel. In a video posted on the Internet yesterday, he also vowed to help the fight against the Jewish state and called on Muslims in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia to continue fighting against the crusaders (in a reference to the West and its so-called agents). Al-Zawahiri advised Hamas, without mentioning its name, not to integrate with other non-Islamic factions under the cloak of the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Meanwhile, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs David Miliband and EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana are due to visit Cairo today and tomorrow respectively to discuss Egypt's efforts to achieve peace in the region.
