Israel will soon hold talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres said yesterday.
"In a very short while, we shall start to talk with him," Peres said in an interview with foreign media.
Peres said that Abbas, a moderate, was a viable negotiating partner who was legitimately elected by his people. He said Palestinians must choose between the path of compromise that politics offers, or the "uncompromising" road of religion.
Abbas is locked in a power struggle with the Islamic group Hamas, which defeated his Fatah party in legislative elections in January. The dispute has triggered factional fighting.
Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, has refused to cave in to calls by Western donor nations to renounce violence and recognize Israel, despite growing hardship.
"Foreign support won't come to a party which opposes peace, which doesn't recognize Israel," Peres said on the eve of an international conference of heads of state and other leaders in Kazakhstan. Participants are expected to discuss security and other issues of mutual concern. A delegation from the Palestinian Authority is attending.
Visiting France this week, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would set its borders with the Palestinians unilaterally if peace talks stay stalled.
Abbas has pressured Hamas to accept a proposal that implicitly recognizes Israel. Abbas has endorsed the plan as a way to restart peace talks and lift the crippling international sanctions that have rendered the government unable to pay salaries that sustain one-third of the Palestinian population.
Meanwhile the Hamas government wants a ceasefire with Israel and is willing to ask Palestinian militants to stop firing rockets from Gaza into the Jewish state, a spokesman said on Thursday.
But Ghazi Hamad said Israel had to first stop military activity in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
"I spoke today with the prime minister and he said we definitely want quiet everywhere. We are interested in a ceasefire everywhere," Hamad, speaking in Hebrew, said in an interview on Israel Radio.
The Islamic militant group scrapped a 16-month truce with Israel last Friday and soon after launched a barrage of makeshift rockets at the Jewish state from Gaza.
Earlier this week a senior member of Olmert's party threatened Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas with assassination if the group resumed suicide bombings.
And Israeli media reports said the director of Israel's Shin Bet security service had warned Hamas, via Abbas aides, that its leaders would be targeted if rocket attacks continued.
Along the Israel-Gaza frontier, Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants who approached the Israeli-built border fence, Palestinian security officials said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said troops spotted the three men planting explosives.
"They were attacked, also from the air, and we saw they were hit," the spokeswoman said about the night-time encounter.
Earlier, commenting on prospects for a new ceasefire, Hamad said a truce would be conditional.
"We are ready to launch discussions with factions over stopping rocket firing but only if there is an Israeli commitment to cease all military attacks against all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank."
Israeli officials were not available to comment.
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