Reports: Hamas eyes request to hold off suicide attacks

Arafat's Fatah movement proposes moratorium on suicide attacks.

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RAMALLAH, West Bank (CNN) -- Leaders of the radical Islamic group Hamas on Friday were said to be considering a three-month moratorium on suicide attacks in Israel, proposed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

According to numerous reports in the Israeli media Friday, a meeting between Fatah and Hamas leaders in Cairo, Egypt, ended with a pledge to continue cooperation and to meet again -- but not with the agreement on stopping the suicide attacks that Fatah wanted.

Fatah officials, according to sources familiar with the talks, were said to have proposed the moratorium out of fear that more attacks would help hard-liners in the upcoming Israeli elections.

Israel Radio reported Egypt's senior intelligence officer Gen. Omar Suleiman had told Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about the Cairo talks and the proposed moratorium. Suleiman was reported to have asked Sharon to halt the government's policy of targeted killings.

However, Ra'anan Gissin, a Sharon adviser, said: "The question is not what was said in Cairo but what happens on the ground, and so long as nothing happens on the ground we will continue to do whatever it takes."

Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist organization, has been labeled by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization. The group's military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, admits terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians as well as attacks against the Israeli military.

On November 28, the Likud party holds primaries to pick a candidate for prime minister. Israeli prime minister hopeful and Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that if he is elected, his first task will be to expel Arafat from the West Bank.

Sharon has taken a less volatile approach and at least two polls published Friday show Sharon with a wide leader over Netanyahu in the upcoming party vote.

The same polls show Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna with a wide lead over his Labor party rivals, former Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Knesset member Haim Ramon in the race for Labor's nominee for prime minister.

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