Putin to Issue Invite To Hamas Leaders

JERUSALEM, Feb. 9 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated Thursday that he would soon invite the leaders of Hamas to visit Moscow, signaling the first crack in diplomatic efforts to isolate the radical Islamic group as it prepares to form the next Palestinian cabinet.

"Russia is maintaining contacts with the Hamas organization and intends in the near future to invite the leadership of this organization to Moscow," Putin said at a news conference during a visit to Madrid.

Putin's announcement drew a sharp rebuke from Israeli officials, who said it marked a break from the position held by the group known as the quartet -- Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations -- since Hamas's victory in parliamentary elections last month.

"Israel supports the quartet position -- Russia being a full and active member of the quartet -- as expressed by [U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan in the days following the elections, that said Hamas is not a partner for a political dialogue unless, one, it recognizes Israel, two, it abandons terrorism, and three, it accepts the legitimacy of signed agreements," said Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman.

In Washington, U.S. officials were caught off guard by Putin's comments and sought clarification from Russian officials. Like Regev, C. David Welch, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, noted to reporters that Russia was a member of the quartet and had agreed to the group's stance toward Hamas.

"These are the principles that were clearly articulated now several times by the quartet and again with Russian participation and agreement," Welch said. "We would expect that any meeting that occurs with any Palestinian representative, including Hamas, would emphasize these principles."

Hamas leaders, now touring Arab countries to outline their political program and seek financial support for the nearly bankrupt Palestinian Authority, indicated that they would accept Putin's invitation.

The Palestinian Authority's president, Mahmoud Abbas, is expected to ask Hamas, known formally as the Islamic Resistance Movement, to form the next cabinet when the legislature convenes next week. The movement won 74 of 132 parliamentary seats, imperiling the Palestinian Authority's lifeblood of foreign aid because the United States, Israel and other nations consider Hamas a terrorist organization for carrying out scores of attacks targeting Israeli civilians.

Israel has urged foreign governments to isolate a Palestinian Authority that includes Hamas until the movement recognizes the Jewish state's right to exist. But Hamas leaders have said they have no intention of doing so and would only consider a long-term truce with Israel if it withdraws from all territory it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

The Bush administration and European diplomats have publicly endorsed the Israeli position, but Putin's invitation opens a schism in that once-unified front. The quartet is the sponsor of the now-dormant peace plan known as the "road map," which envisions a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas does not support that outcome.

In another development, the Palestinian Authority's attorney general, Ahmed Moghani, confirmed that he has frozen more than two dozen bank accounts of former government officials who have been implicated in a widening corruption investigation that dates back nearly a decade. Although the inquiry mostly covers the period when Yasser Arafat ran the Palestinian Authority, the preliminary results have been disclosed in recent days for political reasons.

Moghani has announced that at least $700 million and perhaps far more has been stolen from the Palestinian Authority since 1997. So far he has arrested at least 25 officials of the Fatah movement -- founded by Arafat and now led by Abbas -- which lost its monopoly on power in the Jan. 25 parliamentary elections. The inquiry has found that front companies, construction-contract kickbacks, phantom payrolls and other methods were used to steal perhaps more than $1 billion from the Palestinian Authority, most of it donated by foreign governments.

Abbas, commonly known as Abu Mazen, authorized the attorney general to announce the preliminary findings before Hamas, which campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, entered parliament. A technical team from the World Bank is also meeting with Palestinian officials to determine whether to release $300 million in emergency funds that the bank withheld from the Palestinian Authority last year after it failed to carry out specified reforms.

"I think by doing this Abu Mazen would like to improve the reputation of Fatah, which is now almost totally destroyed," said Bassem Eid, director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. "In addition, he doesn't want the coming government of Hamas to look into this. Then he would be in trouble."

Also on Thursday, masked gunmen kidnapped the Egyptian military attache in the Gaza Strip a few hundred yards from his office. None of the various Palestinian armed groups asserted responsibility for the abduction. Egypt has played an important role in Gaza, serving as a broker between the various parties whose rivalry has sharpened since the elections.

Earlier in the day, Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinian gunmen in two separate attacks on the Erez crossing into Israel in northern Gaza. Israeli military officials said the men were armed with rifles and hand grenades.

Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.