Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Friday called on Socialist leaders gathered in Geneva to support his attempts to isolate the Islamist Hamas movement, which has taken control of the Gaza Strip.
Abbas told the 400 delegates of the Socialist International (SI) that he was "determined to isolate the (Hamas) coup d'etat, delegitimise all militias, and enfore law and order over all parts of the Palestinian territory."
He denounced the "bloody Hamas coup d'etat... which was accompanied by a series of crimes, murders and aggression against everything Palestinians stand for."
He also warned that "there are those in our region who support those who staged the coup d'etat with the objective of hindering any progress in our region towards balanced and genuine solutions to our problems."
"I am confident in your continued support in all spheres, in order to defeat the objectives of the putschists," Abbas said.
The beleaguered Palestinian president, who heads the secular Fatah movement, was greeted with a standing ovation by delegates, and went on to call for talks with Israel.
"I renew my message to the Israeli people, our hands are extended to you in order to achieve a just and comprehensive peace," he said.
The head of Israel's left-wing Meretz party, Yossi Beilin, meanwhile criticised the peace-building "Quartet" of the European Union, United States, United Nations and Russia -- for which former British prime minister Tony Blair has just been named a new envoy -- as a catastrophe.
"I think the Quartet is a true catastrophe for the Middle East," he told the council, saying the US was too passive and the EU too unwieldy.
"I hope that the nomination of Tony Blair will change things. But there would have to be a miracle, he'd have to be a real magician when the problems are so deep," Beilin said.
Instead, Beilin said the best hope for peace was the Arab plan, first launched in 2002, which offers Israel normal ties if it withdraws from all land conquered in the 1967 Six Day War.
Just hours after standing down as British prime minister on Wednesday, Blair was named international envoy for the Quartet.
Arab commentators and analysts quickly dismissed Blair as a lackey of US President George W. Bush, incapable of easing Palestinian hardship or bringing peace to the troubled region.
However, Abbas welcomed his nomination and "has given the assurance that he will work with (him) to arrive at a peaceful solution on the basis of two states," chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said earlier this week.
The biannual council of the Socialist International is being attended by other key figures from the Middle East, including Iraq's President Jalal Talabani, Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, and the head of Iraqi Kurdistan's autonomous government Massud Barzani.
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