Carter says Hamas ready to live beside Israel

But exiled group rejects unilateral cease-fire proposal

JERUSALEM - The armed Islamist movement Hamas is prepared to accept Israel as a neighbor if the Palestinian people approve the terms for peace, former US president Jimmy Carter and the group's exiled leadership said yesterday after a visit to the region that included seven hours of negotiations.

Carter, the most prominent Westerner to formally talk with the group, said he secured that agreement even as Hamas rejected his proposal for a unilateral monthlong cease-fire. Hamas, which has previously vowed to destroy Israel, also declined to meet with an Israeli deputy prime minister who has expressed interest in discussing the fate of a captured Israeli soldier.

But Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who brokered the 1979 deal that established peace between Israel and Egypt, said his trip had shown the value of negotiating with Hamas leaders.

"We do not believe that peace is likely, and we are certain that peace is not sustainable, unless a way is found to bring Hamas into the discussions in some way," Carter said in an address to the Israeli Council on Foreign Relations before flying back to the United States. "The present strategy of excluding Hamas and excluding Syria is just not working."

Actions on the ground yesterday contradicted the positive words of Hamas. Rockets were fired on Israel from Hamas-ruled Gaza, including one that wounded a 4-year-old boy, the Associated Press reported. And Abu Jandal, a leader of the Hamas military wing, said his group would soon step up attacks against Israel.

Israeli officials reacted with scorn to Carter's meetings and the agreement, saying they amounted to a propaganda coup for the Islamist group with no progress to show for it. They said the group has made similar declarations in the past and has no intention of honoring them.

"It was sad to see how Hamas is using former president Carter to try to get legitimization it does not deserve," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel.

Israel's top leaders avoided Carter during his visit, and US officials criticized him for meeting with people that Washington and Israel have formally designated as terrorists.

"It is pretty clear to us that there is no acceptance on the part of Hamas of any kind of negotiated settlement," said Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman.

In an interview, Carter, 83, said Hamas had shown enough flexibility to make talks worthwhile, and he believed the group was no longer determined to destroy the Jewish state. "It may be something they wish, but they know it's a fruitless concept," he said.

Carter said the group's "ultimate goal is to see Israel living in their allocated borders, the 1967 borders, and a contiguous, vital Palestinian state alongside." Carter was referring to the borders that Israel had before the 1967 Middle East war, when it captured Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. .

The 1988 charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel, and its officials have repeated that stand in the years since. It also encourages the killing of Jews.

But Carter said that in his negotiations, Hamas leaders referred to the charter dismissively as "an ancient document" and that they agreed to abide by any peace deal forged by Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, if the Palestinian people approve it. That could be accomplished either through a referendum or by a vote of the legislative council.

The talks resulted in a written agreement to that effect.

The terms, however, give the group substantial room to later back out. Hamas officials, for instance, have said that any referendum must include Palestinians living in exile worldwide - something that could make the vote logistically impossible.

Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who met with Carter in Damascus, Syria, said there yesterday that the group would not formally recognize Israel even if it accepts a peace deal that implicitly acknowledges Israel's existence.

"We accept a state on the June 4 line with Jerusalem as capital, real sovereignty and full right of return for refugees but without recognizing Israel," Meshal said, referring to the borders before the 1967 war.