Hamas chief says West Asia conference doomed to fail

DAMASCUS, Aug 27 (Reuters) A US-sponsored international conference on Israeli-Palestinian peace is doomed to fail because it will serve only Israel's interests, Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal said in a CNN interview broadcast TOday.

Calling the gathering, expected in November, ''a meeting controlled and directed by (US Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice'', Meshaal, who lives in exile in Damascus, said neither Israel nor the United States was serious about achieving peace.

''There is no doubt that the outcome will be leaning towards Israel's best interest because (Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert is the stronger side in the negotiations,'' Meshaal said, according to CNN's translation of his comments in Arabic.

''All these reasons are going to lead to a failure,'' said Meshaal, who was injected with poison by Israeli agents in Jordan in 1997 but was saved by an antidote sent from Israel after his attackers were overpowered and arrested.

Hamas Islamists, who violently took control of the Gaza Strip in June, have rejected Western calls to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.

Leaders of Hamas, whose 1988 founding charter calls for the Jewish state's destruction, have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

''The American administration is fighting Hamas and working on isolating it,'' Meshaal said in the interview, which CNN reported was held in a heavily guarded Hamas safe house in the Syrian capital.

But Meshaal said Washington, which supports Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, would eventually realise it would have to deal with Hamas for the sake of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

''I only want to tell them to take a short cut and not waste their efforts,'' he said, while acknowledging that a US invitation to Hamas to attend the upcoming conference was unlikely.

Meshaal called on the international community to deal with ''the reality of the Palestinian arena'' -- an apparent reference to Hamas's strong influence -- and move the West Asia closer to ''genuine peace'' in which ''the waterfall of blood will stop''.

REUTERS RAR HS1847