U.S. dismisses Hamas comments described by Carter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States brushed off on Monday former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's report that Hamas would accept a peace deal with Israel if the Palestinians voted for it, saying the group's basic stance had not changed.

After he met Khaled Meshaal, Hamas' top official, on Friday and Saturday in Damascus, Carter said the Islamist group's leaders told him they would "accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders if approved by Palestinians."

He was referring to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East War, and to a referendum on a peace deal Washington hopes to clinch this year.

But some of Hamas' commitments to Carter were short on details and remarks by a Gaza-based Hamas official suggested the movement was not abandoning its long-held positions.

Meshaal, in an apparent softening of the group's position, said it would accept the establishment of a Palestinian state on land occupied by Israel in 1967 but it was not prepared to recognize the Jewish state.

Hamas is viewed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel and its charter calls for the destruction of Israel.

The group has refused to accept the major conditions laid down by the quartet of Middle East peace mediators -- the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union -- for dealing with it.

"What is clear to us ... is that nothing has changed in terms of Hamas' basic views about Israel and about peace in the region," State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.

"They still refuse to acknowledge or recognize any of the basic quartet principles, including recognizing Israel's right to exist; renouncing terrorism; and acknowledging all the previous agreements that have been made between the Palestinian Authority and Israel," he added.