Envoy meets Hamas over BBC journalist

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Britain held on Thursday its first talks with a leader of the Islamist Hamas group, sending an envoy to meet Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to discuss efforts to free a BBC journalist abducted in Gaza.

A British diplomat said before the 30-minute meeting that Consul-General Richard Makepeace would "just discuss the kidnapping" and the talks were not a departure from the European Union's shunning of Hamas, which it terms a terrorist group.

BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was abducted from his car on March 12. He has been held captive longer than any of the several foreign journalists who have been seized, and subsequently released, by gunmen in the Gaza Strip.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the kidnapping nor public word on Johnston's fate despite pledges by the new Palestinian unity government to find him.

"We had asked for a meeting with the prime minister over this very important humanitarian issue," Makepeace told reporters in Arabic after the session, which drew Israeli criticism.

"I believe all of us want to achieve a peaceful and a quick solution to this unfortunate problem," he said.

Ghazi Hamad, a Palestinian government spokesman, said: "I think we are on the way to resolve it (Johnston's release). But we need more time, to bring him alive and not harmed, without using force, but we are discussing all choices."

Hamad said Haniyeh told Makepeace he hoped the meeting would lead to a dialogue with Britain on political and economic issues.