Meshaal accuses United States of attempting to sabotage Palestinian reconciliation efforts.

MOSCOW - The leader of democratically elected Palestinian movement Hamas met here Monday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for talks on efforts to reunify the two main Palestinian independence movements.

"We met to pursue our discussions, and our principal goal is to build on efforts brokered by Egypt to secure Palestinian unity," Lavrov told reporters at the start of talks with Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal.

Meshaal, who lives in exile in Damascus, praised Russia for seeking a "reconciliation" between Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas.

The two groups have feuded since Hamas routed Fatah forces in Gaza in June 2007 to prevent a US-backed coup against Hamas’s democratic election.

In a newspaper interview published Monday, Meshaal accused the United States of attempting to sabotage reconciliation efforts.

"We know that the US special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, has recently put pressure on Mahmud Abbas and Egyptian officials," he told Russian daily Vremya Novostei.

"If Abbas reconciles with us than the United States will halt aid to the Palestinian administration."

"Russia wants unity in the Palestinian ranks -- the Americans don't care about this," he told the paper.

Meshaal has visited Moscow on two previous occasions, in March 2006 and February 2007. He was scheduled to hold a news conference at 1300 GMT.

Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air, sea and land access to the Strip.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza's sole border crossing that bypasses Israel, rarely opens as Egypt is under immense US and Israeli pressure to keep the crossing shut.

Fatah has little administrative say in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and has no power in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, both of which are Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.

Middle East Online