After months of delay, Russia agreed to Israeli conditions regarding the delivery of armoured vehicles to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces, Israeli officials said on Friday. Israel agreed in November to allow the Palestinians to receive up to 50 lightly armoured vehicles but a dispute emerged over a Palestinian demand that they have guns mounted on them.
According to Reuters, Israeli officials said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during a meeting on Thursday that Moscow agreed to shipping the vehicles without mounted guns. "We have been hearing about these armed vehicles for more than a year," said a Palestinian security official. "Hopefully we will be able to receive the shipment."
The vehicles were offered to the Palestinians by Russia several years ago but the transfer was put on hold after Hamas won elections in January 2006.
Meanwhile, Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip Ismail Haniyeh will expand his government in a bid to strengthen his hold on the coastal territory, an official close to the Hamas government in Gaza said on Friday. "There are consultations to enlarge the government led by Ismail Haniyeh," the official told Reuters. "The prime minister in Gaza offered some Palestinian figures to participate in the government and they have expressed an initial readiness to participate."
The official said Haniyeh's reshuffled government may be presented to the Palestinian legislative council for a vote of confidence, but Fatah has been boycotting such meetings and Abbas has called them illegal.
