Gaza City: Dismissed Hamas premier Ismail Haniya called for new talks with president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party today in his first contact with a foreign leader since the Islamists seizure of Gaza.

Haniya told Yemeni President Ali Abullah Saleh that he wanted a return to the provisions of the power-sharing accord agreed by Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in the Muslim holy city of Mecca in February under the auspices of Yemen's powerful neighbour Saudi Arabia, his office said. "The way out of the present crisis is through inter-Palestinian dialogue without preconditions on the basis of no winner, no loser, a government of national unity and respect for the Mecca agreement," his office quoted him as saying in the telephone conversation.

Haniya's appeal came despite a vitriolic attack on Hamas by the Palestinian president on Wednesday in which he ruled out any possibility of dialogue with the Islamist "traitors" after their routing of his security forces in Gaza. "No dialogue with putschists, murderers and terrorists," he thundered in his first public speech since the Hamas takeover, delivered from his base in the West Bank to which his writ is now effectively confined.

Saudi Arabia has hit out strongly at the factional fighting that effectively cut the Palestinian territories in two, saying it "realised Israel's dream of setting alight the fire of discord and war between Palestinians."

But unlike Egypt and Jordan, conservative Saudi Arabia has been careful not to take sides between Fatah and the Islamists, eager to keep open the possibility of brokering a renewed dialogue between the two sides.