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Senators Push to Exclude Hamas from Elections
(Reuters) Seventy U.S. senators on Wednesday called on President George W. Bush to make it clear to Palestinian leaders that terrorist organizations like Hamas must disarm or be banned from upcoming Palestinian elections. The senators, in a letter to Bush, said the U.S. "would have little choice but to reevaluate all aspects of our relations" with the Palestinian Authority if Hamas was brought into it. The Senate letter follows a resolution passed overwhelmingly last week by the House of Representatives that also urged the exclusion of Hamas from the January 25 parliamentary ballot. The senators said they were "deeply disappointed" that Mahmoud Abbas "has yet to do what the Palestinian Authority has committed to doing on numerous occasions - asserting its control over the terrorist groups that operate freely within the West Bank and Gaza."