''This is the message we here in Moscow will be conveying to Hamas and hoping that Hamas will be listening,'' said Sergei Lavrov before meeting with a delegation from the Palestinian group, which won parliamentary elections in January.
''We don't expect that Hamas will do all this and change itself overnight,'' Lavrov said in an interview with journalists from American news organizations in advance of a visit to Washington on Monday. ''It will be a process hopefully not as long as the process in Britain regarding Northern Ireland,'' where paramilitary groups have been encouraged to disarm and enter politics.
Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations - known in the Middle East peacemaking process as the Quartet - have called on Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence and accept international agreements previously signed by the Palestinian Authority.
After a two-hour meeting with the Hamas delegation, Lavrov said that ''the Hamas leaders said they would honor earlier agreements,'' including the Arab Peace Initiative and the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the road map.
Lavrov noted that these earlier agreements call for recognition of Israel in exchange for resolving issues connected with Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. He said that Hamas ''insisted the moves must be reciprocal.''
Khaled Mashaal, head of the Hamas delegation, laid out what his organization defines as reciprocity. ''If Israel officially announces readiness to return to the 1967 borders, to the return of Palestinian refugees, the destruction of the dividing wall, the release of all arrested Palestinians, our movement will take steps towards peace,'' said Mashaal, citing steps sharply at odds with Israeli positions.
Earlier, when he arrived in Moscow, Mashaal said that the issue of recognition of Israel is a ''decided issue. We don't intend to recognize Israel.''
The invitation to Hamas to visit Moscow, which President Vladimir Putin extended last month, took some foreign governments by surprise. The United States and European Union have sought to isolate the group and refuse to talk to it unless it renounces violence.
The Moscow visit also drew criticism in Israel, where some commentators contrasted Russia's unbending stand of negotiations with separatists in Chechnya with its willingness to speak to Hamas. Russia has never labeled Hamas a terrorist organization.
Putin himself, however, will not meet with the delegation, apparently as an effort to avoid further damage to relations with Israel. The Palestinian group will only get a sightseeing tour of the Kremlin, Russian officials said.
Lavrov rejected suggestions that Russia was somehow trying to wrest away control of the diplomatic process in the Middle East from the United States. ''If there is a deficit of leadership to promote the commonly agreed goals, then we believe we have a responsibility to fill this deficit and to try - without taking over anybody's role,'' he said in an 30-minute interview at the Foreign Ministry.
Lavrov said Russia was motivated by the same spirit of international cooperation that it has shown in its negotiations with Iran over that country's nuclear program. Russia has offered to enrich uranium for Iran's nuclear power plants on Russian soil, so as to guarantee that the country could not use the fuel to develop nuclear weapons.
Russia did not make this offer ''for the sake of propaganda,'' Lavrov said, ''because before this was announced we had very quiet, very professional consultations'' with the European Union, United States and the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Russia acted ''only after everyone said, 'this is a brilliant idea. Why don't you try it?' ''
The IAEA board plans to meet at its Vienna headquarters on Monday to discuss Iran.
Iranian negotiators met again with officials from Britain, France and Germany in Vienna on Friday, but EU officials said there was no breakthrough on a deal to allay foreign concerns that Iran is trying to build nuclear bombs.
