Hamas-led meet rescheduled to rival Annapolis summit

DAMASCUS, Syria - Syria-based Palestinian officials announced on Tuesday that a Hamas-led meeting due here in early November would be postponed to coincide with the U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference later this year.

The Damascus meeting of Palestinian groups opposed to peace talks with Israel had been envisaged to rival the conference called for by U.S. President George W. Bush in Annapolis, Maryland.

The U.S.-sponsored Mideast conference, due in November or December, is expected to relaunch Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.

Talal Naji, a ranking official with the Syria-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, said that a preparatory committee had rescheduled the Damascus gathering, initially planned for November 7-9, to have it "coincide" with the Bush conference.

"This will make it more effective," Naji said.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, Hamas' Damascus-based deputy leader, rejected claims his group's conference was postponed because of any pressures - although he acknowledged pressure was exerted by the United States and some Palestinian groups. He did not elaborate.

The postponement came as moderate Palestinian leaders on Tuesday criticized the Hamas-planned gathering.

In Cairo, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he was not pleased that Hamas had called for the meeting. "We have issued statements against this meeting called for by Hamas because it divides the Palestinian people," Abbas said.

An Abbas envoy who was in Damascus for talks with Syrian officials, Nasr Youssef, also criticized the planned Syria meeting as "inappropriate."

Syria is home to the exiled leaders of Hamas, the militant faction that routed Abbas' Fatah faction from the Gaza Strip in June clashes, precipitating the worst Palestinian split to date, and the Islamic Jihad, another smaller militant Palestinian faction.