Gaza - Hamas will not implement a long-term truce with Israel for the time being, a senior official of the Islamist organization said Sunday.

The offer "was not cancelled," Mahmoud al-Zahar said, but added that there was "no room to implement it for the time being" since "there is no one to talk about this proposal with on the other (Israeli) side."

He said a long-term truce was "a project that can be developed when there are intentions."

Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - Wrapping up a briefing to the sponsors of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Sunday they will keep negotiating, even as the peace process goes through a lull due to the political changes in the US and Israel.

"We, both of us, affirmed that we will continue in these negotiations and that we will not stop even as Israel [prepares to go for] elections," Abbas told a joint news conference with Livni.

"Our meetings will continue as usual," he added.

Damascus - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called into question the seriousness of Israel's efforts to make peace in the Middle East on Sunday, saying the country must prove its intentions by action.

Speaking at a gathering of Arab parliamentarians in Damascus, al- Assad said that Israel's current participation in indirect talks with Syria that are being mediated by Turkey are "just a tactic, not a strategic decision for peace."

Syria and Israel have recently held four rounds of talks through Turkish intermediaries, without significant progress.

Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - The one-day meeting of the Middle East Quartet ended in Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday with announced plans to stick to the Annapolis process, maintain Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and to hold a meeting on the Middle East peace process in Moscow next spring.

The quartet, which is comprised of the EU, the UN, Russia and the US issued a two-and-half- page statement following their meeting with Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that emphasized that direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should be continued and that an agreement will only be announced when all issues are agreed on.

Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni plans to privately meet with three Arab foreign ministers on the sidelines of an international summit on the Middle East peace process on Sunday, informed sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al- Nahyan, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khaled al-Mubarak and Moroccan Foreign Minister Tayib al-Fassi al-Fehrani have agreed to the meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where the so-called Middle East Quartet was meeting Sunday, the source said.

The ministers asked that the meeting not be announced, the source said.

Sharm el-Sheikh/Jerusalem - Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have made serious and intensive progress toward formulating a peace treaty, and the world community should not intervene in the talks, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

In a statement summing up Livni's remarks to the sponsors of the peace process at a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Livni was quoted as saying that to date, the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams had held hundreds of meetings and the sides believed the elements, the principles and the guiding principles for an agreement were in place.