LONDON, March 30, 2008 (AFP) - Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal made an unconditional offer Monday to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to travel to Gaza for talks on their divisions, in an interview with Sky News television.

'We invite Mr Mahmud Abbas to come to Gaza to talk directly without any conditions... to work together to find a solution to the problems in Gaza and the West Bank,' he said in an interview with the British broadcaster.

The aim of the talks would be 'get back our Palestinian union and find the reasons for our problems and to solve the security problem,' he added.

The invitation comes after rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Abbas's Fatah reached a Yemeni-brokered deal on March 23 to open their first direct talks since the Islamists seized control of the Gaza Strip nine months ago.

But within hours of signing the agreement, the two bitter rivals bickered over its meaning, with Hamas focusing on the first part of the statement while Fatah highlighted the second as a precondition for any talks.

And the day after the deal was struck, a senior Israeli official warned Abbas against striking a reconciliation deal with Hamas, saying it would effectively sink faltering Middle East peace talks.

The Hamas seizure of Gaza effectively split the Palestinian territories into two separate entities with the Islamists controlling the impoverished coastal strip and Abbas ruling the occupied West Bank.

Israel considers Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state, a terror group and refuses to have any direct dealings with it.