KUWAIT CITY (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday chided former US president Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas, saying US officials had told him such talks would not help the peace process.
"We counseled president Carter against going to the region, in particular against having contact with Hamas," Rice told journalists on the sidelines of a conference about Iraq in Kuwait City.
"We wanted to make sure there would be no confusion and there would be no sense that Hamas was somehow party to peace negotiations," Rice said, recalling the advice to Carter from US State Department officials.
Rice stressed that President Mahmud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority were the sole party to the peace talks launched with Israel last November in the United States, repeating there should be no confusion about that.
"The United States is not going to deal with Hamas, and we certainly told president Carter that we didn't think meeting with Hamas was going to help the Palestinians who (are) actually devoted to peace" Rice said.
Carter was unable to secure a pledge from Hamas that it halt its rocket attacks on Israel, during controversial talks with the exiled Hamas leader khaled Meshaal in the Syrian capital.
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