Israel says stepping up efforts to isolate Hamas

JERUSALEM, Apr 9 (Reuters) Israel said today it would step up efforts to isolate a new Hamas-led government, formally banning contacts with the new Palestinian administration.

But a statement issued by interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office after a security cabinet meeting did not rule out contacts with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.

''Israel will have no contact with the Palestinian Authority, which is a hostile authority, and will work towards preventing any entrenchment of the Hamas government's rule,'' the statement said.

''But at the same time, there will be no personal disqualification of the chairman of the Palestinian Authority,'' it said, referring to Abbas, whose calls on Hamas to renounce violence have been ignored by the Islamic militant group.

Hamas crushed Abbas's long-dominant Fatah faction in the Palestinian parliamentary election in January.

Israel has said it could not consider dealing with Hamas until the group recognised the Jewish state, abandoned violence and accepted prior Israeli-Palestinian interim peace accords.

In his own victory speech after Israel's March 28 election, Olmert, in a public appeal to Abbas, voiced hopes for a resumption of peacemaking but threatened to take unilateral measures to set Israel's borders in the absence of an agreement.

Reuters SY DB1945