CAIRO - PALESTINIAN president Mahmud Abbas pressed his rivals Hamas on Saturday to accept an Egyptian plan to end Israel's war in the Gaza Strip, as an Islamist delegation arrived in Cairo to discuss the proposal.

'We hope that the (Hamas delegation) will reach an agreement without hesitation,' Abbas told journalists after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who floated his peace plan on Tuesday.

'The situation does not allow us to lose time,' Mr Abbas said as Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip entered its third week.

Hopes for peace are increasingly focused on Egypt's mediation efforts since both Israel and Hamas brushed off a UN Security Council resolution on Friday calling for an immediate truce in the fighting.

The Egyptian plan seeks to meet Israel's requirement of preventing weapons going to Gaza through Egyptian tunnels and Hamas's demand for a reopening of Gaza's borders to normal traffic.

Mr Abbas stressed he wanted an international force in Gaza rather than controlling traffic on the Egyptian side of the border, as suggested by European countries.

An Israeli defence official said Egypt's plan foresaw forces loyal to Mr Abbas, which were kicked out by Hamas in 2007, redeployed on the Gaza side of the border alongside a bolstered Egyptian force.

Solving the border issue is crucial to ending Israel's onslaught on the Gaza Strip which has killed more than 850 Palestinians. Thirteen Israelis have also been killed in the same period.

Under a 2005 deal, Egypt's Rafah crossing with Gaza, the only one to bypass Israel, can only be opened to normal traffic if European Union observers and Palestinian Authority forces are at the border.

But Hamas bloodily ousted forces loyal to Abbas from the Gaza Strip in June 2007 and the EU monitors subsequently left, making it impossible legally to keep the border open.

Israel said on Saturday that Egypt had proposed an 'upgraded version' of the 2005 deal, that would see a beefed-up frontier force loyal to Mr Abbas alongside a strengthened Egyptian border force.

Such a move would require amending the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty limiting Egyptian security forces in the Sinai peninsula, with the Israeli defence official saying the Jewish state 'would be in favour' of the proposals.

'Israel wants calm an end to weapons smuggling into Gaza. If such a solution would answer these requirements, Israel will be satisfied,' he told AFP.

Several EU countries and Turkey have offered to send troops to the border as part of an eventual monitoring mission, but Egypt has reportedly rejected the idea of foreign forces on its borders.

'The situation does not allow us to lose time,' Mr Abbas said, expressing hope that Egypt would manage to 'iron out' different parties' reservations which he said were 'not substantial'.

A Hamas delegation from Gaza and representatives of the Syrian-based leadership arrived in Cairo for talks with Omar Suleiman, Egypt's pointman for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, that will take place on Sunday.

Mussa Abu Marzuk, the Damascus-based deputy head of the Hamas politburo, said Friday that his movement wanted 'clarifications' on the plan.

On Saturday, Hamas's political leader Khaled Meshaal said his movement would not accept any ceasefire that did not lift Israel's blockade on Gaza and open all border crossings into the coastal strip, including Egypt's Rafah border crossing.

He added in a pre-recorded statement aired on Arab satellite televisions that Israel had failed to reach its goals in the offensive.

'What did you achieve through this war... other than the killing of children, of innocents?' he asked the Israeli leadership.

Israel imposed its blockade after the Hamas takeover. It has said it will not accept a ceasefire that allows Hamas to rearm with weapons smuggled in through tunnels linking Gaza and Egypt.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after meeting Mubarak that Berlin would send a team to Egypt in the coming days to discuss ways of offering technical help and expertise to control smuggling.

The US army already has an engineering team supporting Egyptian tunnel-hunting forces on the border, although they have left since the Israeli offensive began.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Abul Gheit, speaking alongside Steinmeier, said efforts to deal with smuggling would have to be matched by a reopening of conventional crossings with the Gaza Strip to allow supplies in.

'We see that many of the weapons come by sea and we clarify that the question of smuggling goes back to the blockade enforced by Israel on all the crossings.' he said. -- AFP