RAMALLAH/GAZA: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will Sunday begin a weeklong European tour to Britain, Germany and Russia, his spokesman said Thursday. “Abbas will go on Sunday to London and meet with Prime Minister David Cameron and other British officials on Monday and will brief them on the latest political developments in the region,” Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.

“On Tuesday, he will go to Germany and will meet with German Chancellor [Angela] Merkel and other German officials on Tuesday and Wednesday,” he added.

“On Thursday, Abbas will go to Moscow to meet President [Dmitri] Medvedev on Saturday and well as other officials.”

Abu Rudeina said Abbas would consult with foreign leaders on the exploratory talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators that have been taking place in Amman.

Envoys from both sides have met twice under the auspices of Jordan and the peacemaking Quartet, which comprises the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia.

The aim of the meetings is to kick-start negotiations, which have been on hold since late September 2010 over the issue of settlement construction.

The Palestinians say they will not negotiate while Israel builds settlements and they want clear parameters for any new talks, including an acceptance by Israel of the lines which existed before the 1967 war as a basis for negotiations on borders.

The Israeli government says it wants negotiations without preconditions.

The Quartet has called on both sides to present their comprehensive proposals on borders and security before Jan. 26, and the Palestinians have warned they will not continue with the informal meetings unless Israel submits its outline.

In the absence of negotiations, the Palestinians have focused their attention on the international arena, seeking full U.N. membership and winning a UNESCO seat in 2011, over U.S. and Israeli opposition.

Separately, Gaza’s Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh will visit Iran and Qatar this month, his adviser told Palestine newspaper Thursday.

Haniyeh, who has just returned from his first trip abroad since the Islamist movement forcibly took control of Gaza in 2007, would visit Iran and Qatar as part of a wider tour of the Muslim world, Yusef al-Rizq told the newspaper, which is close to Hamas.

Hamas and Abbas’ rival Fatah group have been engaged in fresh moves to push ahead with a reconciliation deal signed in April following years of bitter rivalry following the 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza.

Last month, Abbas met Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in Cairo and the two agreed on a process that could pave the way for the Islamist group to join a reformed Palestine Liberation Organization and for long-delayed Palestinian elections.

Haniyeh Thursday blamed Israeli interference and unspecified “external pressures” for a delay in implementing reconciliation with Fatah.

“Palestinian reconciliation is confronted by external pressures and by Israeli interference meant to block it and delay its implementation on the ground,” Haniyeh told a public meeting with MPs and delegates of other Palestinian factions in Gaza City.

But Amin Maqbul, secretary-general of Fatah’s revolutionary council, said that it was divisions between the exiled Meshaal and the Hamas leadership within the Gaza Strip which lay at the root of the delay in implementation.

“We know that there are forces of Hamas in Gaza who want neither reconciliation nor to give up their empire, their money or their influence,” he told Voice of Palestine radio.