Ankara  - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in Ankara Friday evening for talks with Turkish leaders who are expected to push him to support some kind of reconciliation between his Fatah movement and Hamas.

Abbas is scheduled to hold meetings with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday night and with President Abdullah Gul on Saturday before leaving Ankara on Sunday.

Strasbourg, France - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday renewed his request to the European Union to send peacekeepers to the Middle East and to help him organize elections in the Palestinian territories.

"The time has come for the international community to bear its legal, political and moral responsibilities and provide it with adequate international protection," Abbas told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

"I would like to stress again our request to send international forces in order to protect our people," he said.

Paris  - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday in Paris that he hoped the upcoming Israeli elections did not mean the Middle East peace process would have to start again from square one.

"We will work together with anyone the Israeli people elect, as long as we don't have to start at the beginning again," Abbas said one week before Israeli general elections are to be held.

Cairo  - Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is due to meet Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak Monday for a new round of talks on establishing a long-term ceasefire in Gaza.

His visit comes amid reports of a significant progress in negotiations and Israeli threats of a "fierce and disproportionate" response to continued rocket fire on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Ramallah - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Friday that he was working on sustaining the ceasefire Israel and the Palestinian factions have agreed on two weeks ago in the Gaza Strip.

He said in a news conference in Ramallah with the visiting Slovenian President Danilo Turk that "the first thing we want to do is to sustain the ceasefire."

He said that even though the 22 days of Israeli military assault on Gaza has ended, "there remains some problems we want to see end so that we can start rebuilding and providing the people of Gaza with their humanitarian needs."