Egypt says Israel-Gaza truce unlikely with escalation

By Alaa Shahine

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit urged Israel and Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers to hold their fire to enable Cairo to try to broker a new truce between them.

But Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, on a visit to Cairo for talks on the escalating violence with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, said Hamas must pay for rocket attacks against the Jewish state.

"Egypt will not stop efforts (to broker a truce) as long as the parties want this, but I cannot imagine that we can convince the two sides to go back to the calm as long as there is this escalation," Aboul Gheit told reporters at a news conference with Livni.

"What we are asking them both is to restrain themselves, and then we see how to come back to that period of quiet," he added.

Prospects of restoring the Egyptian-brokered truce dimmed this week after Israeli soldiers killed three Hamas gunmen they said were trying to plant explosives along the Gaza-Israeli border. Militants responded with rocket fire at southern Israel.

Livni, leader of Israel's ruling Kadima party who hopes to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert after the next elections, described the latest escalation as "unbearable."

"Hamas needs to understand that our aspiration to live in peace does not mean that Israel will take this kind of situation any longer. Enough is enough," Livni told reporters in Cairo.

In Jerusalem, Olmert urged Gaza's Palestinians to reject the Hamas government and threatened a harsher reply to rocket fire.