Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday urged Israeli acting premier Ehud Olmert to abandon plans to set the borders of the Jewish state unilaterally after his election victory.
"The result was expected. But what is more important now is that Olmert changes his agenda and abandon his unilateral plans to fix the borders," Abbas told reporters on the sidelines of an Arab summit in the Sudanese capital.
After his centrist Kadima party emerged the narrow winner in Tuesday's election, Olmert claimed a mandate to draw up the Jewish state's final borders and issued an appeal to the Palestinians for peace.
Olmert has vowed not to deal with Islamic radicals Hamas who won a landslide victory over Abbas' mainstream Fatah party in January's Palestinian parliamentary elections.
Unless Hamas renounces its call for the eventual destruction of Israel and forswears violence, Olmert has pledged to plough on with the unilateral fixing of Israel's borders by 2010, effectively annexing swathes of the occupied West Bank that are home to the largest Jewish settlements.
Israel has announced that it will cut all ties with a Hamas-led government, due to take office on Wednesday, and has already withheld millions of dollars in custom duties from the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority.
The United States and the European Union have also threatened to cut millions of dollars in aid to a Hamas-led government unless it recognises Israel and commits itself to the peace process.
{{/usCountry}}The United States and the European Union have also threatened to cut millions of dollars in aid to a Hamas-led government unless it recognises Israel and commits itself to the peace process.
{{/usCountry}}The dire situation has left the moderate Abbas striving to reach out to Israel and the international community in order to keep the peace process alive and save the Palestinian Authority from financial ruin.