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US Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama during a Jewish community meeting at Congregation Rodeph Shalom Synagogue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 15, 2008.
Photo: AFP Copyright 2008
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WASHINGTON (AFP-EJP)---Democratic White House contender Barack Obama could not hide his irritation Monday when asked by a reporter what he thought about former president Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas last week.
"Why can't I just eat my waffle?" the Illinois senator said as he ate breakfast in Scranton, Pennsylvania, according to MSNBC television pictures.
Pressed again for an answer, he replied: "Just let me eat my waffle."
Obama, who is battling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, criticized Carter last week for seeking to meet with leaders of the Islamist movement, which he said was "a terrorist organization."
Obama was facing pressure from the Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who told Fox News that he and Hillary Clinton should get much tougher with Carter, a fellow Democrat. “Senator Obama and Senator Clinton should directly repudiate and tell President Carter he should not meet with what is, fundamentally, a terrorist
(group) that's been responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people,” McCai said.
Obama told a synagogue in Philadelphia that while it was legitimate to meet with the leaders of states such as Syria or Iran, even if they were hostile to Israel, "Hamas is not a state" and did not warrant such a move.
"As president, I will do everything that I can to help (Israel) protect itself ... We will make sure that it can defend itself from any attack, whether it comes from as close as Gaza or as far as Tehran," Obama told the synagogue, according to his campaign aides.
Meshaal: no recognition of Israel
At a public meeting Sunday, Obama also noted the difficulty of negotiating a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians where one group representing Palestinians -- Hamas, who run the Gaza Strip -- refused to recognize Israel.
Carter said Monday that Hamas had told him it would recognize Israel's right to live in peace if a deal is reached and approved by a Palestinian vote, after two meetings in Damascus with Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal.
But hours after he spoke, Meshaal told a press conference in Damascus, where he lives, that Hamas would not recognize Israel and would insist on the right of some 4.5 million Palestinian refugees to return to Israel.
Meshaal said Hamas agreed to a Palestinian state on the land in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza that Israel occupied in the 1967 war.
The Palestinian state, he added, must have "Jerusalem as its capital, with genuine sovereignty, without settlements".
He added that this did not mean recognizing Israel, but he said: "We have offered a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, a truce of 10 years as an alternative to recognition."