Report: Top US official meets unity government minister

A senior US diplomat met Tuesday with the Palestinian finance minister, Palestinian officials said, in the first American contact with the new coalition government and a sign of a break in policy between Israel and its closest ally.

Israel has said it will not have contact with any member of the new Hamas-Fatah coalition. The United States, however, has indicated it would maintain contact with moderates such as Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad.

Fayyad said he met with Jacob Walles, the US consul general in Jerusalem, in the West Bank town of Ramallah. "This meeting was part of my contacts with the international community," Fayyad told The Associated Press.

Fayyad, a former World Bank official who is well respected in the West, has been leading Palestinian efforts to end international sanctions against their government. The Palestinian coalition's political platform announced Saturday stops short of meeting the terms of Western donor countries that Palestinian leaders renounce violence, accept Israel's right to exist and abide by previous agreements the Palestinians made with Israel and others.

Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, spokeswoman for the US consulate, declined to confirm the meeting with Fayyad took place. But Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, on Monday specifically named the finance minister as someone US officials have met with and would be willing to meet with in the future.

An Israeli official said the government was waiting for official US comment before responding.