Italys Prodi Plays Down Diplomatic Row Over Hamas

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi on Wednesday played down suggestions his government was divided on Middle East policy.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi on Wednesday played down suggestions his government was divided on Middle East policy after his foreign minister angered Israel by saying Hamas should not be isolated.

Israel's ambassador to Italy expressed indignation at Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema's stance that Hamas -- viewed as a terrorist group by the West -- should not be isolated as it had won a democratic election and represented a majority of Palestinians.

"What is Italy's foreign policy?" Ambassador Gideon Meir asked in an interview in the newspaper Corriere della Sera. He said D'Alema's comments had undermined the position of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who dismissed a Hamas-led unity cabinet last month after the group seized control of the Gaza strip.

Prodi told reporters he had expressed Italy's position clearly during a two-day trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories last week.

"I told both that in the long term one can certainly not think of peace when there are two Palestinian peoples who oppose each other," Prodi told reporters following him on a trip to Slovakia.

"We need to get a peace conference with precise aims and work on all the parties involved," he said. When asked whether that included Hamas, he replied: "All. I said all parties involved."

D'Alema, a former prime minister and a leading figure in Italy's centre-left government, told a party rally on Monday that isolating Hamas and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah could backfire and push them "into the arms of al Qaeda".

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said D'Alema was wrong and that Hamas already had ties to al Qaeda. "It would perhaps be too simple to think that we, the international community, are responsible," he told a news conference in Paris.

Ambassador Meir said: "Talking to Hamas or giving the impression that it is a legitimate body means laying traps for President Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), (Israel's) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the peace process."

Prodi was due to meet former British prime minister Tony Blair later on Wednesday to discuss his new role as Middle East envoy for the "Quartet" made up of the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations.