07 August 2007
The Norwegian government has said it has severed its ties with Hamas. At a meeting with Israel’s president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, Norway’s foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store confirmed that the controversial decision taken by his government in March 2007 to have relations with Hamas had been rescinded. President Peres had censured Oslo for having been the first Western government to open diplomatic channels with the Islamist group. "We need to warn Hamas that nobody in the world is willing to fund its terror activities of firing rockets at Sderot and other towns near the Gaza Strip," Peres said. The new Israeli president added that speaking with Hamas would be interpreted as approval of its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June.
Norway decided to back out of an international boycott of a Hamas-led government last March after the Islamic group agreed to form a national unity government with rivals Fatah. Store said Hamas had strong links to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly al-Qaeda. On the Iranian front, Peres asked Norway's backing for US-led efforts to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions through economic sanctions. "The biggest threat to world peace is nuclear terror and therefore we need to do everything possible, through economic sanctions, to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons," Peres told Store.
//<![CDATA[
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
//]]>
//<![CDATA[
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5972049-1");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
//]]>
