Abbas urges truce; calls infighting `madness'

Palestinian Authority Chairman President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday denounced the factional fighting in Gaza as "madness" and urged an end to the bloody confrontations there. Abbas said he hoped Hamas and Fatah would take up an Egyptian offer to mediate truce talks Wednesday. "This is madness, the madness that is going on in Gaza now," he said in a news conference with the Dutch foreign minister. "Whoever shoots and fires is responsible."