The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Gaza City

Hamas said on Monday that the Palestinians will not be bound by any decisions taken at this week's US-hosted Middle East peace conference.

"The decisions taken at Annapolis are not binding on the Palestinian people, who have not authorised anyone -- either Arab or Palestinian -- to erase their rights," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told AFP. The Islamists, blacklisted as a terror group by both the European Union and the United States, have not been invited to the peace conference which opens on Tuesday in Annapolis, near Washington.

Later on Monday Hamas, along with members of the smaller Islamic Jihad group, were to convene a "counter-conference" to the US peace meeting to warn the Palestinian leadership not to make any concessions to the Israelis.

"Our conference will carry the message of the dangers of a normalisation of ties with Israel," he said. "The Palestinian cause should not serve as a vehicle for Arabs and the international community to normalise their relations with the Israeli enemy."