GAZA CITY, Sept 24, 2008 (AFP) - Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniya cast doubt Wednesday on Egyptian-brokered Palestinian unity talks, saying the path to dialogue with president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party was 'impassable.'

'What is happening on the ground in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank indicates that the road to dialogue is impassable and faces major obstacles,' the prime minister of Gaza's Hamas-run government said in a statement.

'There is one hand asking for dialogue and another hand holding a knife behind its back,' Haniya added.

The two main Palestinian movements have been bitterly divided since Hamas drove Abbas loyalists from Gaza in June 2007 in a week of bloody street battles and seized power in the impoverished coastal strip of 1.5 million people.

On Tuesday, Fatah agreed to an Egyptian proposal to create a new Palestinian unity government acceptable to the international community and welcomed the idea of dispatching Arab forces to Gaza to help implement it.

Hamas was to send a delegation to Cairo in the coming weeks to discuss the plan, but it was far from clear whether the Islamist movement -- which has always opposed the presence of foreign forces in Gaza -- would agree to it.

Israel and the West have blacklisted Hamas as a terrorist group and have boycotted Palestinian governments that include the Islamist movement, which won parliamentary elections in 2006 but is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Abbas has said he would meet with Hamas leaders but only after they return Gaza to his control. Hamas has refused to relinquish control of Gaza but said it would meet Abbas without preconditions.