Cairo  - A Hamas delegation in Egypt for talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman on Tuesday said no progress had been made in negotiations on a long-term truce in the Gaza Strip.

"Hamas and Egypt are agreed that an indefinite truce is impossible at the moment," Mohammed Nasr, a senior member of the Hamas delegation in Cairo, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"We are negotiating the length of the truce, the opening of the border crossings, and conditions for reconciliation talks with Fatah." Talks would continue on Tuesday night, he said.

According to Israeli press reports, Amos Gilad, the head of the Israeli Defence Ministry's political and security wing, on Monday told Egyptian negotiators that Israel refused to agree to anything but an open-ended truce, and said that lifting the blockade on Gaza would only follow "progress" in negotiations on the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured near Gaza in June 2006.

Hamas has repeatedly rejected those conditions.

The diplomatic wrangling in Cairo continued as Damascus-based Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal continued his high-profile visit to Iran.

"We should have ties with countries like Iran that supported us. What is not normal is that some Arab countries don't support us," Meshaal told reporters in Tehran on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, fighting continued in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel. On Tuesday morning, Palestinian militants fired a Russian- type Grad rocket at the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon.

The rocket landed in a residential neighborhood, but there were no reports of casualties. Israeli defence officials say militants in Gaza have fired 40 rockets, mostly locally made, at southern Israel since both sides declared unilateral ceasefires two weeks ago.

Israel has responded with airstrikes, killing one Palestinian Monday in an attack on a vehicle in the southern Gaza Strip and bombing a corridor along the Egyptian-Gazan border late on Sunday.

Egypt is brokering parallel, indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, on one side, and Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' faction, Fatah, on the other.

Hamas and Fatah leaders have ratcheted up their rhetoric in recent days. Hamas has said before reconciliation talks with Fatah can begin, Egypt and Israel must lift the blockade of Gaza, and Fatah Fatah must cut its security ties with Israel and release Hamas prisoners held in the West Bank.

In remarks addressed to Abbas on Monday, Mohammed Nazzal, a member of Hamas' politburo in Damascus, told reporters that Hamas is "not begging for dialogue. We are not running after it."

"Perhaps Abbas spoke without thinking," he said. "Perhaps the victory of Hamas and the resistance in Gaza threw him into a state of confusion."

Nazzal's remarks were a response to a verbal salvo from Abbas over the previous days.

While visiting a Cairo hospital where Palestinians wounded in the fighting in Gaza were being treated Sunday, Abbas accused Hamas of "taking risks with the blood of Palestinians, with their fate, and dreams and aspirations for an independent Palestinian state."

Hamas has called for a new Palestinian coalition to replace the Palestine Liberation Organisation, saying that it no longer represents the Palestinian people.

Speaking to reporters in Cairo on Sunday, Abbas swore there would be "no dialogue with those who reject the Palestine Liberation Organisation." (dpa)