Special report: Palestine-Israel Relations    

    RAMALLAH, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, Thursday slammed Syria for allowing Hamas to hold a conference in Damascus, which Abbas and Fatah deemed as an attempt to coup on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

    "We can't call it a conference ... it was a festival organized by the Syrian intelligence," said Abed Rabbo.

    Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip and is not a PLO member, and several other Palestinian groups including the Islamic Jihad movement on Wednesday began a three-day national conference in the Syrian capital Damascus.

    Damascus is home to exiled leader of Hamas' Political Bureau Khaled Meshaal and many other Palestinians activities.

    The conference was also attended by Syrian officials and representatives from Lebanon, and organizers said the meeting was partly aimed to reduce differences and disputes among Palestinian factions.

    But Abbas' Fatah and another two major Palestinian factions had refused to attend the conference.

    "Though the attendants hung Palestinian symbols, most of them are irrelevant to Palestine," Abed Rabbo claimed.

    Abed Rabbo said the conference affected ties between the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority (PA) and Syria. "This makes us go back to previous tense atmospheres we have often tried to evade," he warned.

    Meanwhile, Saleh Ra'fat, a PLO member, said the conference was meant to boost "Hamas coup in the Gaza Strip," referring to Hamas' takeover of Gaza by force in mid-June of 2007 after routing security forces loyal to Abbas.

    The conference, which Hamas considered as a forum to maintain the Palestinian principles, was a play because it was only the PLO which preserves the Palestinian principles, Ra'fat added.