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Egypt, Jordan Put Pressure on Hamas

In Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, spoke bluntly as he emerged from separate talks between President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. "When Hamas sits in the Palestinian parliament, you talk with your tongue and not with a gun...Hamas should not run away from the reality," he says.

In Amman, Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit, says the Jordanian government - which expelled Hamas leaders after it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 - would continue its ban on contacts with the group`s exiled leaders. The latest message from the two key American allies in the Arab world was the strongest yet to the terrorist group, which calls for Israel`s destruction, opposes peace talks, refuses to lay down its arms and has carried out dozens of deadly suicide bombings against Israelis.

In an interview, however, Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk pointed to a different reality and rejected President Bush`s call in his State of the Union address for Hamas to disarm and recognize the Jewish state. Abu Marzouk said that "These conditions cannot be accepted and the U.S. president should accept the reality, because the Palestinian people have exercised their democratic choice, with mechanisms that are basically Western, and they chose Hamas."