CAIRO - Arab League foreign ministers meeting in an emergency session in Egypt on Sunday decided to stop participating in the international financial blockade on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

"We decided not to cooperate with it (the blockade). There will no longer be an international siege," said Bahrain's Foreign Minister Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa.

The U.S.-led blockade was imposed on the PA following the election of Hamas in January.

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The international community has demanded that Hamas recognize Israel, renounce violence, and accept prior agreements signed between Israel and the PA, before lifting the blockade.

The ministers also called for a fresh international peace conference to resolve the Arab-Israeli dispute based on the principle of land for peace, to which the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Israel, and Arab parties would be invited to attend the peace conference.

The conference would be aimed at "reaching a just and comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict on all tracks according to the relevant international resolutions and the principle of land for peace", the statement said.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, who voted in favor of the conference, sidestepped the issue of whether Hamas would be part of the Palestinian delegation.

"Will this conference be held or not? What's the agenda of the conference? We don't know. I leave this matter to the future," he told reporters.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said he was not aware of such a
conference proposal, but Hamas could not be a party to talks with Israel
unless it met all three of the international community's demands.

"A multilateral conference doesn't make Hamas legitimate," Regev said. "What makes Hamas legitimate is accepting the international benchmarks."

Arab League foreign ministers held the meeting Sunday in order to formulate a response to Israel Defense Forces operations in the Gaza Strip, including errant IDF shelling that killed 20 Palestinians on Wednesday.

The meeting followed a U.S. veto Saturday of a UN Security Council draft resolution condemning the Gaza operations and demanding the IDF pull out of the territory.

Sunday's discussions were attended by 11 Arab foreign ministers and other senior officials and diplomats at the Cairo headquarters of the Arab League.

"There should be a unified Arab stance in support of the Palestinians against what Israeli is doing," said the League's Undersecretary General Mohammed Sobeih, a Palestinian diplomat.

He said the Arab officials may consider asking the UN General Assembly to debate what he called the "Israeli massacres" after the American veto in the Security Council.

"It is shocking. Every time the United States exercises its veto power, it gives a license to Israeli extremists and generals whose hands are stained with Palestinian blood," Sobeih said.

Ahead of the meeting, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said he called the gathering at the request of the Palestinians and Lebanon to "look into practical steps and measures to deal with Israel's ongoing and recurring aggression against the Palestinian people."

Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar said he proposed to convene an emergency Arab summit to "discuss the deteriorating situation in the Palestinian territories."

The IDF operations in the Gaza Strip are aimed at preventing the continued Qassam rocket fire at Israeli borderline communities.

Arab states want Hamas to endorse a 2002 Arab initiative that trades peace with Israel for the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

On Sunday, the pan-Arab Asharq Awsat newspaper quoted Zahar as saying Hamas will not recognize the initiative. "It is worthless," he said.