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Damascus: Former US president Jimmy Carter met Hamas leader Khalid Mesha'al in Damascus on Friday for talks expected to focus on ways to include the group in efforts to achieve Palestinian-Israeli peace.
Senior Hamas members also attended the meeting, at which Carter would also raise the fate of an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas.
In a proposal passed to Carter, an Israeli minister offered to meet the Hamas leaders to ask for the release of the soldier - a move which would contravene official Israeli government policy.
The controversial meeting between Carter and Mesha'al was being held at a Hamas office and attended by top Islamist leaders Mousa Abu Marzuq and Mohammad Nazzal.
Abu Marzuq said ahead of the meeting that Carter and Mesha'al would discuss the fate of Corporal Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters in June 2006.
Carter, who is on a regional tour to promote Middle East peace, earlier met Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.
Details on that meeting were not immediately available, but Carter spokesman Rick Jafculca told reporters the two were to discuss the peace process.
Carter is on a nine-day regional tour that has already seen him visit Israel, the West Bank and Egypt, where on Thursday he met with top Gaza-based Hamas leaders Mahmoud Zahar and Saeed Siam.
That meeting took place in Cairo after Israel barred the former president from visiting the Gaza Strip.
Israel has snubbed Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace prize, over his plans to talk with Hamas.
However, Israeli minister Eli Yishai said he is ready to meet Mesha'al to negotiate the release of prisoners held by the Islamist movement, according to Friday's Haaretz daily.
"I am ready to meet with all necessary Hamas members," the newspaper quoted the deputy prime minister as telling former Carter during a meeting this week.
During the Israeli leg of his visit, Carter met Shalit's parents and pledged to take up with Mesha'al calls for his release. Washington has said the former president, seen as the architect of the historic 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, is acting in a personal capacity.
In Beirut, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch said Carter's conversations with Hamas leaders risked being "misrepresented".
"We are concerned to advance peace here. We see no intention on the part of Hamas in doing so and there is some risk that these conversations will be misrepresented by Hamas," he said.
But Carter insists he is not acting as a mediator and has been urging talks with Hamas and Syria, saying peace cannot be reached without them.
"I think it's absolutely crucial that in a final dreamed-about and prayed-for peace agreement for this region that Hamas be involved and that Syria be involved," he had said in Israel. Carter's tour will also include Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
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