Islamic Hamas movement said on Sunday the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was unauthorized to reach any deal on an Israeli soldier held by the Islamic movement in Gaza Strip.
"Any agreement made between Abbas and the Israeli leaders he meets will be worthless since it lacks the approval of Hamas and the other factions that hold Gilad Shalit," Osama al-Muzini, a Hamas official in Gaza said.
Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reported on Sunday that Abbas will meet Dalia Itzik, the Israeli Knesset Speaker, in Jordan and that the issue of Shalit was listed on the meeting's agenda.
"Abbas meetings with the occupation leaders don't affect us and we don't expect he can secure a deal in line with our demands," al- Muzini said.
Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and the Army of Islam have kidnapped the soldier in June 2006 from an Israeli army camp in southeast Gaza Strip.
Egyptian mediators had acted between the two sides but the mediation efforts have suspended since Hamas' taking control of the Gaza Strip last month and the subsequent departure of the Egyptian security delegation.
The factions want Israel to release some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in addition to women, patients and youngsters. They also insist that the people who spend many years in captivity should be freed in exchange for Shalit.
On Friday, Israel unilaterally freed 255 prisoners, most of them from President Abbas' Fatah movement, as part of a series of measures to bolster the Palestinian president whose forces lost Gaza into the hands of Hamas Islamists.
Source: Xinhua
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