Hamas Takes a Defiant Stance in Russia Talks but Will Keep Truce

Leaders of the militant Palestinian movement Hamas struck a defiant tone Friday as they launched a series of high-profile meetings in Russia, demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal before they negotiate with the Jewish state and declaring that they no longer have “interest or enthusiasm” in their year-old cease-fire.

Yet Russia was able to win a pledge that Hamas would continue the truce. Hamas officials also said they would recognize earlier Palestinian agreements with Israel, including the internationally brokered “road map” for the phased implementation of a Palestinian state -- provided that Israel “moves in the same direction” toward peace and ends its occupation of the West Bank, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov said.

“This is an important statement. I will not make optimistic forecasts; however, this is a step in the right direction,” Lavrov told reporters.

Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal, flanked by eight stern, bearded bodyguards and a host of Russian security men, made it clear that Hamas had not wavered in its demands or its willingness to fight if Israel continued its targeted killings of Palestinian militants and other acts of violence.

“Bluntly speaking ... the ball is in the court of Israel,” Meshaal told hundreds of journalists in an hourlong news conference after the talks. “Last year, the Palestinian people came up with a new [cease-fire] initiative. The initiative lasted a full year, but Israel didn’t free prisoners or react in any way.

“That’s why we don’t have any special interest or enthusiasm toward this truce or this period of calm,” he added. “We denounce these murders [of Palestinian militants] and proclaim our holy right to protect ourselves.”

Israelis have reported several violations of the March 2005 cease-fire but have also said that the number of Hamas-organized attacks has decreased considerably. At the same time, there has been a substantial upturn in attacks by other Palestinian militant groups, including Islamic Jihad, since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last summer.

For both Russia and Hamas, the meetings mark an important new channel in Middle Eastern diplomacy. Russia is the only major power so far willing to hold direct talks with Hamas, which swept to a majority in the recent Palestinian parliamentary elections, but which Israel, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations have shunned for its bombing and rocket attacks against Israelis.

Israeli officials warned that the meetings would undermine Russia’s legitimacy as a power broker in the region and diminish its role in the international “quartet” formed to negotiate an Arab-Israeli peace settlement.

The Bush administration has tried to form a united front to demand that Hamas recognize Israel, reject violence and endorse earlier Palestinian-Israeli agreements as conditions for international contacts. Facing criticism for cracking that unity, Russian leaders insisted Friday that they had set out the international community’s conditions in a way that Hamas leaders could not have mistaken.

“I don’t think that Hamas would have any serious future if Hamas doesn’t change,” Lavrov said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it had emphasized “the importance of the consistent transformation of Hamas into a political party aiming at the advancement of democratic institutions, law and order in the Palestinian territories.”

The Hamas talks mark the latest sign that Russia intends to chart a more independent course in the Middle East after what it sees as a series of U.S. missteps in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russian officials see Washington’s advocacy of democratic transition in regimes from the Middle East to Russia’s own borders as potentially destabilizing.

“Russia from its past history well remembers the infatuation with obsessive ideas of changing the world, and cannot identify itself with the similar projects now being put forward, whatever they are called -- the promotion of freedom and democracy everywhere, or ‘transformational diplomacy,’ ” Lavrov wrote Friday in Moskovskiye Novosti before leaving for talks in Washington.

Russia does not intend “to take the position of a detached onlooker” and is instead prepared to act decisively, he said.

Lavrov added that Russia “will not let anybody set it at loggerheads with the Islamic world,” and emphasized that “we cannot identify ourselves with a strategy at the core of which lies somebody’s striving to uphold their prestige.”

The message also appeared in part to be targeted to Monday’s meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will decide whether to refer Iran’s nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions. Russia has gone to great diplomatic lengths to deter that.

Yevgeny Satanovsky, head of the Institute for Middle East Studies in Moscow, said Russia had decided to take a more aggressive posture in the Mideast because it feared instability there might spill over into its own territory in the Caucasus.

“We’re not enemies. We’re part of one civilization,” he said. “The only thing is that we’re very skeptical about not only the methods but the results of using American policy in the Middle East.”