Gaza City - A senior Hamas leader hinted Thursday that the radical Islamist movement would extend its term in the Palestinian parliament if no agreement was reached with the rival Fatah party.

If an agreement was reached before January 2010, when the term of the current Hamas-dominated parliament expires, the elections would take place that month, "but if the agreement is not reached before January 25, then we will communicate with the factions to endorse a new period," said Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader based in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas defeated the long-dominant Fatah movement led by President Mahmoud Abbas in parliamentary elections in 2006. A year later, Hamas routed pro-Abbas forces and seized control of Gaza, splitting the coastal strip politically from the West Bank.

The Gaza take-over was the culmination of a bitter and at times deadly Hamas-Fatah power struggle, the result of the 2006 parliamentary election and of presidential elections won by Abbas the previous year.

Since then, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), seated both in Gaza City and in the West Bank city of Ramallah, has become idle and has not passed any resolution.

Hamas and Fatah have currently resumed talks through Egyptian mediation. They agreed on forming a unity government that would quit when the elections are held in January 2010. However, they failed to agree on the government's programme and the electoral law.

According to Zahar, Hamas has prepared its vision about the outstanding issues and will present it to the Egyptian mediators before another round of talks with Fatah resumes on April 26.