Hamas/Cairo

     The Hamas delegation to Cairo had "a positive reaction" to the Egyptian ceasefire initiative, the MANA news agency reported Wednesday. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmet Aboul Gheit said Monday evening that Hamas had accepted the Egyptian draft which calls for immediate end to aggression on Gaza, the opening of the border crossings and the withdrawal of Israeli forces inside the Strip. He said that Hamas representatives presented their stance to Egyptian intelligence officials, and that they in turn will relay the outcome of their talks to Israel. Arab diplomats say Hamas is reluctant to accept a long-term ceasefire agreement right away. Israel, which wants an end to rocket attacks on its towns and guarantees that Hamas cannot smuggle in more weapons through Egypt, said it would not agree to a truce that allowed the Islamists to regroup and rearm. "Israel seeks a durable quiet that contains a total absence of hostile fire from Gaza into Israel and a working mechanism to prevent Hamas from rearming," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Earlier Wednesday, the Saudi-owned Arabic language Al Arabiya TV reported that under the Egyptian proposal, Hamas had agreed to abide by the 2005 agreement which calls for Palestinian Authority forces to man the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt under the supervision of European observers. Hamas conditioned the cease-fire agreement with Israel on the immediate withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip, Al Arabiya reported. Meanwhile, a Hamas leader said that points of contention remained over the Egyptian proposal. "There are still points of difference on the initiative and these points have not been resolved so far," Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, said in an interview broadcast on Al Jazeera television. "The initiative in its present form does not realize the [Palestinian national] interest. Specific points in it have to be changed... We believe there is no initiative which cannot be modified or changed," he added. The original proposal was for a temporary truce to allow for talks on long-term arrangements to secure the Egypt-Gaza border and end the Israeli blockade of Gaza. (16,35)