Gaza - A Hamas delegation was due to head for Yemen on Saturday to discuss proposals for Palestinian reconciliation put forward by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Hamas spokesman said.
Saleh's initiative calls on Hamas to relinquish control of the Gaza Strip, which the militant movement seized after routing the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007.
The delegation comprises Hamas' politburo chief Khaled Mashaal, his deputy, Moussa Abu Marzouq, and a former Hamas interior minister, Said Siam.
Damascus - A senior official with the radical Palestinian group Hamas said in an interview Friday that the group had temporarily broken off talks with Israel on a prisoner exchange involving captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Mussa Abu Marsuk, deputy politburo chief of Hamas, told the London-based pan-Arab paper Al Hayat that the move was taken after Israel had on several times closed the border crossing with the Gaza Strip in violation of the two sides' ceasefire agreement.
Hamas had now called off a round of negotiations which was to have taken place next week in Egypt, he added.
Gaza - A Hamas delegation was due to head for Yemen on Saturday to discuss proposals for Palestinian reconciliation put forward by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Hamas spokesman said.
Damascus - A senior official with the radical Palestinian group Hamas said in an interview Friday that the group had temporarily broken off talks with Israel on a prisoner exchange involving captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. 
