Hamas: We won't oppose Israel-Syria talks

Hamas has declared that it would not oppose peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, the A-Sharq al-Aswat daily reported on Sunday.

A member of the Gaza Strip's parliament, Yehye Moussa, told the newspaper that the negotiations would bear no influence on the group's own relations with Damascus.

Moussa said his group was aware of the constraints facing many regimes in the Arab world and would not involve itself in their internal manners.

Another Hamas MP, Aataf Adwan, said that the movement wanted to see the return of all Arab lands from Israel and viewed bilateral negotiations as a legitimate method of achieving such a goal.

Syria's ties with Hamas have long been denounced by Western governments, who accuse Damascus and its ally Iran of supplying military support to the Gaza Strip.

Syria recently said it would resume indirect peace talks with the new Israeli government as long as they focused on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has called resumption of negotiations a "crucial strategic interest" and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said he is willing to enter peace talks as long as they are held without preconditions.