RIYADH, Dec 8: Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal is reportedly in Saudi Arabia holding talks with Saudi officials on the Palestinian crisis and the peace process, sources close to Meshaal were quoted as saying.

Meshaal arrived in Saudi Arabia late on Friday, as pressure on President Mahmoud Abbas seemed to be growing to start talking to Hamas. President Abbas has been defying the pressure from the Arab world so far.

An aide of Khalid Meshaal said that Khaled Meshaal would take up the issue of initating talks with Fatah during his deliberations with the Saudi leadership here.

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia had hosted a high-profile reconciliation talks between the Fatah and Hamas leaderhip in Makkah. But the process seemed to have faded away with the take over of Gaza strip by Hamas leadership. Ever since Presidnet Mahmoud Abbas has refused to talk to Hamas, despite pressure from the Arab heavyweights, including Saudi Arabia.

Hamas in the meantime also denied reports that it has offered the PA Fatah leadership control over security headquarters in the Gaza Strip in return for resuming dialogue.

Dr Sami Abu Zuhri, the Hamas spokesman in the strip, said in a statement that the reports carried by the Maan news agency in this respect were “baseless” and only aimed at “creating more confusion”.

He underlined that Abbas’ position was obstructing such a dialogue and his Fatah faction’s conditions were “unreasonable”. Abu Zuhri also denied another Maan report about differences within Hamas political leadership.

HAJ PILGRIMS: The report of Khaled Meshaal flying into Riyadh came in amidst reports that Egypt and Saudi Arabia had allowed 2,000 Palestinians from the Hamas ruled Gaza to cross the border into Sinai, for Haj, bypassing arrangements made by the Palestinian Authority (PA) of President Mahmoud Abbas.

The PA had arranged with Israel to allow some 2,000 Palestinians from Gaza to go to Saudi Arabia for Haj via the Kerem Shalom and Allenby Bridge border crossings for the Haj. “The Egyptians stabbed us in the back,” a senior PA official was reported as saying by the Haaretz daily of Israel. According to the reports, the embassy in Cairo swiftly processed the Gaza pilgrims’ visa applications sent by the Hamas government, while the embassy in Amman held up all the visa applications sent by the PA, even those of West Bank pilgrims, PA officials were reported complaining.

The PA, which had invested huge efforts in organizing the pilgrims’ trip to Saudi Arabia in a bid to improve President Mahmoud Abbas’ status in the Gaza Strip, was enraged at the move.