A Hamas leader said in Cairo on Wednesday that his group would not recognize Israel, despite mounting international pressure.

"Hamas will not recognize Israel and we will not give legitimacy to occupation," Khaled Mashaal, Hamas' political leader who was currently at a visit to Egypt, told a press conference.

Mashaal said Hamas would not give up violence as it was entitled to resist what it regarded as occupation of the Palestinian land by Israel.

Mashaal, who headed a Hamas delegation to Cairo since Sunday, held talks with Egyptian officials on forming a new Palestinian government.

Hamas swept the Jan. 25 legislative elections, defeating the long-dominant Fatah movement led by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Moussa Abu Marzouq, deputy chief of Hamas political bureau, said the movement would not recognize Israel, but there was a clear-cut distinction between recognizing Israel and dealing with it.

"The Palestinian authorities have to deal with the occupation forces in various domains, as this fact has nothing to do with recognition of Israel," he said.

Marzouq explained that there was cooperation between the Palestinians and Israel in a variety of areas before recognizing Israel.

Also in Cairo Wednesday, a top Hamas official said they had decided to name Jamal al-Khudairi, a Gaza businessman who ran for parliament as an independent with Hamas backing, as its candidate for Palestinian prime minister.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because the group has not yet made the proposal to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

If al-Khudari is not accepted in negotiations with Abbas or turns down the nomination, the group will name as candidate the current Palestinian Trade and Economics Minister Mazen Sonnoqrot, another independent with Hamas sympathies, the Hamas official said.

Al-Khudairi, about age 50, has never addressed issues such as violence or recognition of Israel, sticking in most of his campaign speeches to issues such as education and job training. He has, however, talked about the need for internal Palestinian reform.

He is a businessman who owns the biggest mattress factory in the West Bank and Gaza, and holds an engineering degree from an Egyptian university. He has been, for 14 years, chairman of Gaza's Islamic University, an institution mostly controlled by Hamas.

The Hamas official said group leaders had unanimously agreed on the choice of al-Khudairi.

During their meeting, the Hamas leaders also decided that if all efforts to name a cabinet with a non-Hamas prime minister fail, they will name one of their own leaders as the new prime minister, the official said.

"Then (Gaza Hamas leader) Ismail Haniyeh will be our choice," the official said.

(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily February 9, 2006)