PARIS (EJP)---French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has confirmed that his country resumed contacts with Hamas despite the European Union's refusal to hold official talks with the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Kouchner confirmed a report in Le Figaro newspaper that said a retired senior French diplomat had met last month in Gaza with Hamas leaders Ismail Haniya and Mahmoud Zahar.
"These are not relations, they are contacts," Kouchner told Europe 1 radio. "We are not the only ones to have them. We are not charged with any kind of negotiation."
The European Union has recently said that it would stick to its stance of not holding any direct contacts with Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization.
In a television interview last month, French President Nicolas Sarkozy had vowed that "as head of state" he would not hold talks with Hamas.
Asked by a journalist about former US president Jimmy Carter's meeting with a leader of the Islamic movement in Damascus, Sarkozy declared: "I don't want to speak to Hamas because I don't have the right to speak to an organization that wants to wipe Israel off the map."
Sarkozy spoke however about "bridges of discussion that might be useful one day."
In fact, Le Figaro reported, the French president knew already about the diplomat's meeting in Gaza.
Carter held meetings in early April in Damascus with exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, angering Israel and the United States.
Kouchner defended the meetings as essential for French diplomacy in the region, while insisting they remained limited.
"We must be able to talk if we want to play a role, if we want our envoys to be able to get into Gaza," said Kouchner.
Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah forces nearly a year ago.
'No official mission'
Le Figaro quoted the retired diplomat, Yves Aubin de La Messuzière, who also served as ambassador to Iraq, as saying that "it was not an official mission" and that Hamas leaders were ready to accept a Palestinian state created within the 1967 borders, which he said amounted to an "indirect recognition" of Israel.
He said the Hamas leaders told him that they were ready to stop suicide attacks.
"What surprised me is the fact that the Islamist leaders recognize the legitimacy of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas," the diplomat told Le Figaro. "In all offices I have seen his (Abbas) portrait hanging next to pictures of Hamas leaders," he added.
Until now, relations between France and Hamas have been limited to intelligence services. They were stopped in June 2007 when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip by force. But in August, the French diplomatic posts in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were authorized to renew with the Islamists.
Israeli officials said they had been reassured by France there is no change in its policies toward Hamas.
On Monday, Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon acknowledged for the first time that talks are underway with Hamas through Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, acting as a mediator.
In Washington, the State Department spokesman played down contacts involving France and the Hamas but said such contacts were generally not "wise or appropriate."
Sean McCormack told reporters that not only did he understand that a retired private French citizen had met with Hamas officials but that France's overall policy toward Hamas had not changed.
McCormack said the French "subscribe to the policy that Hamas must live up to the requirements of the quartet declaration in London," referring to the quartet of the United States, European Union, Russia and the United States.
The quartet has drafted a road map for peace that calls for the Palestinians to halt violence against Israel as part of plans for a separate Palestinian state that will live alongside a secure Israel.
The United States and the European Union oppose talks with Hamas unless it renounces violence and recognizes Israel's right to exist.
Related story
www.ejpress.org/article/26516
