Hamas says not bound by Palestinian ceasefire

GAZA CITY - Palestinian Islamist militant movement Hamas said Tuesday that it was not bound by the ceasefire announced by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas at a Middle East peace summit in Egypt.

Abbas's declaration "expresses only the position of the Palestinian Authority. It does not express the position of the Palestinian movements," said Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri.

In Beirut, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdaneh said the ceasefire pledge "does not commit the Palestinian resistance."

Hamas, which has been behind many of the deadliest anti-Israeli attacks during the four-year Palestinian uprising, and other armed groups have nevertheless agreed to a temporary "cooling down" period.

At the summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed to ceasefires aimed at ending the deadly violence and paving the way for a revival of the Middle East peace process.

But Masri said the Palestinians should have been consulted before any such announcement.

"Hamas is maintaining its position. There will not be a real truce with Israel without real reciprocity," he said.

"We will act on the truce depending on the commitment by the Zionist enemy to meet our conditions, starting with all Palestinian prisoners."

Sharon announced at the summit that hundreds of Palestinian detainees would be released from Israeli jails, after a tentative agreement between negotiators for the release of some 900 prisoners.

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