Jerusalem/Ramallah/Gaza City - Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Tuesday welcomed Hillary Clinton's nomination as the next US secretary of state.

Abbas' staunch rival, the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling Gaza, however, said Clinton would display the same pro-Israeli bias as it charged previous US secretaries of state had in the past.

"We don't count on any foreign policy of the American administration, especially when dealing with the Middle East and the Palestinian cause," Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan said, adding "there is no difference between the successive administrations."

Ramallah - The leading Palestinian news agency Ramattan shut down Monday, charging the West Bank-based administration of President Mahmoud Abbas had been "obstructing" its work.

Ramattan said in a statement that the Ramallah-based Palestinian Interior Ministry had been harassing its staff, preventing them from entering Abbas' presidential headquarters to do their work and that police had arrested several staff members.

Ramallah - Israel has asked the Palestinian Authority (PA) to remove 550 members of its security forces from the southern West Bank city of Hebron deployed there since only two months ago, Palestinian acting foreign minister and government spokesman Riad Malki said Monday.

He told a news conference in Ramallah after a regular cabinet meeting that Israeli military commanders recently informed their Palestinian counterparts in Hebron that the PA should suspend its security plan in the city and remove its.

Ramallah - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday that Israel during its talks with him over the past year had proposed concessions to him regarding Jerusalem, but he rejected them because they were partial.

Abbas told tens of thousands of Palestinians who gathered at his Ramallah headquarters to mark four years since the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that he wants a full peace deal and will not accept a partial one.

"We rejected Israeli proposals that indicated making concessions including on Jerusalem and the refugees," he said.

Ramallah - Faced with the failure of Israelis and Palestinians to meet an end of year deadline for a peace deal, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nonetheless insisted Friday that a final settlement of the dispute between the sides was attainable.

President George W Bush's vision of a Palestinian state living alongside Israel "will not come in a single dramatic moment, but it will come," she told a news conference in Ramallah.

Ramallah  - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Friday on US president-elect Barack Obama not to waste any time in getting involved in the Israel-Palestinian peace process, after the US admitted that a peace deal by the end of the year is unlikely.

Addressing a joint news conference in Ramallah with visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Abbas said Palestinians wanted to continue their efforts to reach a final settlement with Israel.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged at last year's Annapolis peace summit to try and reach a peace agreement by the end of 2008.