Carter holds talks with Hamas figure

Jimmy Carter met a prominent Hamas figure Tuesday in the West Bank, further rankling Israeli officials who have boycotted the former U.S. president over his contacts with the militant Islamic movement.

Nasser Shaer served as deputy prime minister in a government headed by the group after it won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. Shaer said he and Carter, who met in Ramallah, discussed efforts to arrange an unofficial truce between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli government leaders have shunned Carter, a Nobel Peace laureate who brokered the first Arab-Israeli peace accord, because of his plans to meet Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria this week.

Carter said he would try in his meeting with Meshaal to “get him to agree to a peaceful resolution of differences, both with the Israelis . . . and also with Fatah.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, dominant in the West Bank, was routed by Hamas from the Gaza Strip in June.

A controversy over security arrangements for Carter in Israel took a new twist Tuesday when the U.S. Embassy said that because of a “misunderstanding” among its staff, it had not delivered a request for protection to Israel’s Shin Bet security service.

Carter is being guarded by his U.S. Secret Service detail.

An Israeli official said no request for help had been received, but Carter’s delegation previously said it had been told by the U.S. Embassy that a request for assistance had been relayed to the Israelis.