DOHA, Aug 20 (AFP) - A Hamas official accused the administration of US President George W. Bush Friday of pandering to the pro-Israel lobby ahead of November's presidential election by arresting two alleged members of the Palestinian Islamist group.
The Bush administration is "seeking in the runup to the approaching elections to curry favor with the Zionist lobby in the United States in order to raise its popularity under the banner of fighting terrorism," Hamas politburo member Mohammed Nazzal told Al-Jazeera television from Beirut.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced earlier Friday that two suspected members of Hamas had been arrested in the United States and charged with supporting a foreign terrorist organization, money laundering and racketeering.
Muhammad Hamid Khalil Salah, 51, of Chicago, and Abdelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar, 46, of Washington, were arrested on Thursday night.
US authorities also issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect facing the same charges -- the deputy head of Hamas's politburo, Musa Mohammed Abu Marzuq, who currently resides in Syria.
The fact that an arrest warrant was issued against Abu Marzuq, who was "imprisoned in the United States from 1995 to 1997 on the same charges and released, subsequently going to Jordan," showed that the administration does not know what it is doing, Nazzal charged.
Asked if Salah and Ashqar were members of Hamas, whom Washington lists as a "terrorist" group, Nazzal said Hamas had no organization inside the United States.
"There is (in the United States) a large Palestinian community, and an Arab and Islamic community, which sympathize in one way or another with Hamas and the Palestinian resistance ... but there is no individual with organizational links to Hamas," he said.
Nazzal said Salah had been detained during a visit to Israel and "imprisoned for several years," but did not make clear when this happened.
Bush faces Democratic nominee John Kerry in the November 2 election.