Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged visiting Palestinian Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal on Tuesday to keep fighting Israel, state television said.
The United States and Israel accuse Iran of ”interference” in Iraq, through backing Shi’ite militias, and of sponsoring terrorism, including the Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon’s Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah group. Tehran denies the charges.
”The [Palestinian] government should use its brave and pious forces to continue resistance against the Zionist regime [Israel]”, Ahmadinejad told Mashaal at the start of his two-day visit to Iran, state television reported.
Iran refuses to recognise Israel and Ahmadinejad has called the Israeli state a ”tumour” that must be ”wiped off the map”. Iran’s support for the Palestinians has grown more vocal since Ahmadinejad came to power in August 2005.
The Islamist Hamas and the Fatah group of US-backed President Mahmoud Abbas reached an agreement last month in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to form a unity government, in a bid to end Palestinian infighting.
Washington has warned Abbas that peace talks with Israel will go nowhere if his Fatah faction joins the agreed unity government with Hamas, which refuses to recognise Israel.
Mashaal said Hamas had no intention of changing its policy to recognise the Jewish state.
”Our stance remains the same as before the Mecca deal,” he told reporters after meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Israel has vowed to boycott the unity government unless it recognises the Jewish state, renounces violence and accepts interim peace deals.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert plans to meet Abbas as early as Sunday, before the unity government is formed, Israeli officials said on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said on Monday the unity government would not be announced before the end of next week.
Mashaal praised Iran for its ”financial, political and moral” support to the Palestinian nation and the government.
”We are looking forward to Iran’s support to the Palestinian nation and government … to break Palestine’s economic and political isolation,” Mashaal said.
Shi’ite Muslim Iran has offered financial support after a shortfall caused by a Western financial blockade on the Hamas-led government since last year.
Mashaal will meet Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani on Wednesday. — Reuters