By NNN-KUNA,
Cairo : Former US President Jimmy Carter has held a meeting with senior Hamas officials in the Egyptian capital and indicated that they expressed a desire to seek peace with Israel with the consent of the Palestinian masses.
Carter told an audience at the American University in Cairo Thursday that his meeting with Hamas leaders lasted about three hours.
Senior Hamas officials Mahmoud Al-Zahar and Saeed Seyam travelled from Gaza to Cairo on Wednesday for the meeting.
Carter said the two Hamas officials indicated that they would accept a peace agreement with Israel should a plan in this respect was approved through “a referendum of the Palestinian community.”
He noted that he emphasized the necessity to halt missiles’ launching from the Gaza Strip on Israel during the meeting. Carter had requested Israeli permission to go into Gaza but it was turned down.
The 83-year-old former president was on the fourth day of a nine-day “study mission” to the Middle East as part of his “ongoing effort to support peace, democracy and human rights in the region,” according to the Carter Centre’s web site.
During his stop in Israel, most officials — including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert — refused to meet with Carter, angered over his insistence that Israel should talk to Hamas, which was considered a terrorist organisation by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
Before his trip, Carter said he would act as a “peace promoter”, not as a negotiator on behalf of the United States.
Carter, who helped broker the historic peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in the late 1970s, has also angered many in Israel with his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, in which he was critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
Carter told the American University audience that “if there are any promising events or knowledge or opinions that I receive, then I’ll obviously give these to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to President Bush. If I can get anyone in Israel to listen to me, I’ll give it to the government of Israel.”
As for his vision of an independent Palestinian state, Carter said that there would be one, but with some restrictions on arming.
A press release from the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Centre said the former president was to lead his mission to Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.
Carter, at his next stop, Syria, due later Friday, will be meeting with President Bashar Al-Assad and Hamas’ Political Bureau chairman Khalid Mishaal.
Hamas and Carter will discuss the fate of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, said deputy head of the Bureau, Moussa Abu Marzouq. Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip affiliated with Hamas captured Shalit in 2006.
Tensions between Washington and Damascus have grown increasingly lately, with the US criticizing the Syrian human rights’ record and accusing Al-Assad’sgovernment of attempting to undermine stability in Iraq and undercut Lebanon’s sovereignty and democracy.
The United States had also complained Syria supported militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah and had failed to stop guerrillas from crossing the border into Iraq.