MIDDLE EAST: The Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, met Hamas leaders yesterday in Gaza in a bid to convince them to halt attacks on Israel, as it emerged that President Bush might hold a summit with Mr Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon in the coming weeks to promote the road map peace plan.
"It is possible there will be a summit like that," the Foreign Minister, Mr Silvan Shalom, told Israeli television.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Mr Bush, increasingly worried that the latest round of violence might destroy the road map, could stop in the region after attending a meeting of the leading industrial nations in the French Alps.
The Israeli military said yesterday that naval commandos had seized a fishing vessel on Tuesday in the Mediterranean, 150 km off the northern Israeli coast, which, it said, was carrying a member of the Lebanon-based militia, Hizbullah, and bombmaking equipment. The man was described as a bomb-making expert and was apparently to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army accused senior officials in the Palestinian Authority of involvement in the attempt to smuggle the Hizbullah man into Gaza. Mr Shalom said "those involved in the affair are close to [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat."
In their meeting with Mr Abbas, Hamas leaders intimated that they might consider halting attacks inside Israel - but not on settlers and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza - if Israel ended its targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants and released Palestinian security prisoners.
Hamas has made a similar offer in the past, but it has been rejected by Israel.
"We told him [Mr Abbas\] that if the Zionist enemy stopped its aggression . . . the Hamas movement might stop its attacks against civilians, which does not include settlers and the occupation army presence in the Palestinian land," Hamas spokesman Mr Ismail Hanieh said.
The meeting was Mr Abbas's first with militant groups since he took office on April 30th. He is trying to sell them the idea of a hudna, or temporary truce. Before becoming prime minister, Mr Abbas, a moderate who has spoken out against attacks on Israelis, met militant Islamic groups several times in ultimately fruitless efforts to get them to halt suicide bombings.
Over the last month, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have carried out a series of suicide attacks, in clear defiance of Mr Abbas, who is under pressure from the US and Israel to dismantle armed militias in the Occupied Territories. Hamas officials have made it clear they oppose the US-backed road map, which Mr Abbas hopes to promote.
The new prime minister says he prefers dialogue with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in a bid to achieve a temporary truce, rather than direct confrontation.