ISTANBUL - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Monday urged for reconciliation between feuding Palestinian factions and said Ankara was ready to help.
Healing the rift between the Fatah faction of Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, "is a must," Erdogan said, adding that Hamas welcomed a mediation role for Ankara.
He made the remarks in comments on the situation in the Middle East in the wake of an Israeli raid last week on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, which claimed the lives of nine Turks and plunged Turkish-Israeli ties into deep crisis.
"Divisions should not persist in the current circumstances... I believe we can secure peace" between Hamas and Fatah, he said at a joint news conference with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in Istanbul for a regional security meeting.
"Hamas officials are giving us the required mandate on this issue and they are telling us that they want the problem to be resolved.
"We have to see the same approach from Fatah and I'm going to have a meeting (with them) in a while," he said, referring to scheduled talks with Abbas, who was also in Istanbul.
Erdogan reiterated that Hamas -- viewed by Israel and the West as a terrorist group -- should not be excluded from peace efforts.
"No one in the international community has the authority to put Hamas and Fatah on different status... Saying that Fatah is a group that one can talk to and dismissing Hamas as a terrorist organisation is a very serious mistake," he said.
In an angry tirade against Israel over the bloody ship raid, Erdogan said Friday he did not view Hamas as a terrorist organisation, describing the group as "resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land."
Ankara has previously urged the armed group, which calls for the destruction of Israel, to renounce violence and engage in peaceful politics.
In February 2006, Ankara angered Israel when it hosted Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal in what Turkish officials defended as an effort to press the militant group to lay down arms.