December 11, 2007 (LPAC)--Khaled Meshal, the head of the Palestinian Hamas movement, arrived December 7 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for talks with Fatah, mediated by Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments, to reconcile these two main Palestinian factions.

Speaking from Riyadh, Meshal said his movement was willing to make far-reaching concessions in order to resolve the rift with Fatah, including handing back control of Gaza and the security services to the authority of Palestinian President Abu Mazen, and re-establishing a centralized government to control both Gaza and the West Bank, reports the Saudi-owned daily al Sharq al Awsat, based in London.

Syrian officials told the daily that efforts to bring Fatah and Hamas together through the mediation of Saudi Arabia, were part of a comprehensive Arab effort to bring the internal Palestinian crisis to a resolution. A Fatah leader in the West Bank, Hatham Abed al-Kadr, said Egypt has also been in mediation efforts, which could culminate in a Cairo meeting in about two weeks, Ha'aretz reports today.

Ahmed Yusef, advisor to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, has sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that Hamas is interested in opening a dialogue with the U.S. and European Union.

Lyndon LaRouche explained: "You know, you've got to look at this. This also solves a problem for Israel. It gets this problem off their backs. So it works for all sides. That is, all the same sides."

On the mediation of the Arab states as a group, he said, "I think that that may have gotten some support from the meeting that just occurred among the Gulf Council. That was not a military meeting; it was just a quasi-diplomatic one. But it's extremely important. A lot of things have opened up on this front.

"First of all," he continued, "the big frustration for Dick Cheney and for some people in London, is the fact that it's rather difficult now for Cheney and Co. to pull off the strike on Iran--because the military position of the United States would be devastated by opening such an attack. And with the collapse of the value of the dollar, they would have to be absolutely insane and totally British to do this kind of thing.

"It also has some problems in London," he added, "where people are playing some factions, and playing games--some are across party lines, and some are according to party lines--so it is extremely interesting.

"I don't think we can make predictions," he concluded "but we can make estimates of relative weight of influence, weight of interest. The Gulf Council and similar kinds of things, the regional pressures, regional interests, are now coming into play, which is what I was hoping they would do. This is it. It worked so far. I would say it worked. You can't predict anything in this situation. But you've got to say, it worked."