Arabs urge Hamas to take peace path

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in a post-election call to Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, urged his vanquished Fatah party and the victorious Hamas to work together for peace and an independent state.

Mubarak, long a major player in the Middle East's limping peace process, "stressed the need to unite Palestinian ranks to promote peace efforts and realise the aspirations of the Palestinian people for an independent state," the government newspaper Al-Ahram said.

The call was underlined by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit who saw the Hamas victory -- giving it 76 seats in the 132-seat Palestinian parliament -- as creating "a new political reality in the region".

He said Egypt -- where the regime faced its own election challenge by Islamists last year -- respected the Palestinians' choice and hoped the "peace process would continue under the already-established terms of reference."

King Abdullah II of Jordan, along with Egypt the only other Arab nation to have a peace treaty with Israel, called for a "rapid return" to Middle East peace talks.

Whatever the results of the election, the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel remains "the only solution for establishing peace and putting an end to violence and extremism," Abdullah said.

Hamas has carried out numerous attacks on Israel, while its own militants have been targeted by the Jewish state's military, which in March 2004 killed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and his successor shortly afterwards.

In Syria, which remains technically at war with Israel and has long supported radical Palestinian groups, the official newspaper Al-Baath called on the West to work with Hamas.

"The Europeans and especially the Americans, who have rejected this victory, have no other choice than to submit to reality and work with the new situation," it said.

"Those who want stability in the region ... will have to accept the new context, the more so since Hamas has expressed its intent to develop a political action conforming to the greater interests of the Palestinian people and steadfast demands, that is the rejection of occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital."

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh also called on Hamas to pursue the peace process.

"We hope that the new legislative council and Hamas ... will go ahead in the peace process, according to international resolutions," the SABA news agency quoted him as saying in a letter to Abbas.

In Baghdad, two Iraqi Islamist political groups, one Sunni and one Shiite, welcomed Hamas's victory.

"We hope that the Palestinian people will rid themselves of the occupation and build a state that will secure the needs of their population," Hazem al-Aaraji, a representative of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, told AFP.

The Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party congratulated Hamas for its victory as well as the defeated Fatah for its achievements in the Palestinian struggle.

"We hope that the next government in occupied Palestine will succeed in unifying Palestinian ranks and bring the Palestinian people from six decades of conflict and recover the rights taken away by the Israeli occupation forces."

In non-Arab Iran, hardline cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani said in the official weekly sermon at Tehran University: "All the Muslims are happy, and God willing this earthquake... will be felt right up to the White House,"

"When you say democracy, it means people, and now the people have spoken," he said.