(Changes dateline, adds Israeli and Palestinian comment) By Mohammed Assadi RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denied reports on Thursday that his security forces in the Gaza Strip had recently received an arms shipment meant to bolster him against Hamas rivals. Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah denied comments made to Reuters by Israeli security sources, which said the arms shipment had arrived via Egypt. "The talk about the president's security services receiving arms is unfounded and not true at all," he said. The Israeli sources did not say where the arms shipment had come from, but that it included a few thousand assault rifles, ammunition clips and millions of bullets. Israeli newspaper, radio and television reports said the arms arrived this week. Abbas, a moderate who favours peace talks with Israel, is mired in an increasingly violent power struggle with Hamas, an Islamist group that has governed the Palestinians since March and which rejects Western demands it recognise the Jewish state. Hamas seized on the report as evidence of foreign intervention on behalf of Abbas's more moderate Fatah faction. "Any support to one party against another is an American and Israeli intervention that must be rejected," said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, had no immediate comment on the arms. An Israeli cabinet minister stopped short of confirming that a shipment had been made but said he would back arming Palestinian forces loyal to Abbas. "The weapons are supposed to give Abu Mazen (Abbas) the ability to cope with organisations like Hamas, which are trying to destroy everything that is good," Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel's Army Radio. "If this helps bolster Abu Mazen, then I support it." CIVIL WAR WORRIES Eager to relieve a Western aid embargo aimed at softening Hamas's policies, Abbas this month called for early Palestinian elections. The proposal, which Hamas said amounted to a coup, sparked street battles and worries of a Palestinian civil war. Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported that the recent arms shipment was transferred to Abbas's forces on Wednesday at Gaza's Kerem Shalom border crossing, in coordination with the Israeli military. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been under U.S. and European pressure to take steps that could strengthen Abbas. In his first formal meeting with Abbas on Saturday, Olmert pledged $100 million in withheld tax revenues to the Palestinian president, bypassing the Hamas-led government. The Israeli cabinet on Monday approved the removal of 27 Israeli roadblocks in the occupied West Bank, another territory where Palestinians have been fighting for statehood. The total number of West Bank roadblocks is between 200 and 400. Israeli officials have said Washington has been instrumental in helping to organise a number of past shipments of guns and ammunition to Abbas's presidential guard from Egypt and Jordan. The Bush administration is seeking congressional support to provide up to $100 million to bolster the presidential guard and expand Abbas's control over strategic border crossings. Sources familiar with the plan have said U.S. money would not be used to provide the presidential guard with "lethal" equipment. But Israeli politicians have also voiced misgivings over arms transfers to the Palestinians. "I only pray these weapons will not enter into the arsenal that is used against us," Ben-Eliezer said. (Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza)
