MIDDLE EAST:Hamas has acknowledged the existence of Israel as a reality, but will only consider formal recognition when a Palestinian state has been created, the movement's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal said yesterday.
Softening a previous refusal to even accept the Jewish state's existence, Mr Meshaal said Israel was a "matter of fact" and a reality that will persist.
"There will remain a state called Israel," he said in an interview in Damascus, in what appeared to be the clearest statement yet by the Islamist group on its attitude toward the state it previously had said had no right to exist.
"The problem is not that there is an entity called Israel," said Mr Meshaal, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in 1997. "The problem is that the Palestinian state is non-existent."
Israel and western governments have imposed financial sanctions on the Hamas-led Palestinian government for refusing to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept past peace accords.
