TALKS to agree a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza were “not very promising” in recent days, mediator Qatar has said.
Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said he remained optimistic, but added “time is not in our favour”.
It comes as Israel’s prime minister said he would press ahead with plans for a Rafah ground invasion, despite growing international pressure.
Hamas has blamed Israel for a lack of progress in achieving a ceasefire deal.
Talks have been taking place in Cairo as senior officials from the US, Israel, Egypt and Qatar meet to try to broker a pause in fighting.
“The pattern in the last few days [is] not really very promising but, as I always repeat, we will always remain optimistic and will always remain pushing,” said Sheik Mohammed, speaking at a meeting of world leaders at the Munich Security Conference.
“I believe in this agreement we are talking at a bigger scale and we still see some difficulties on the humanitarian part of these negotiations,” he added.
But he said a truce should not be dependent on a deal to release the hostages held by Hamas.
“This is the dilemma that we’ve been in and unfortunately that’s been misused by a lot of countries – that in order to get a ceasefire, it’s conditional to have the hostage deal,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he sent negotiators following a request from US President Joe Biden, but added they did not return for further discussions because Hamas’s demands were “delusional”.
The group has laid out a series of demands, including the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, full withdrawal of Israel’s forces and an end to the war after a 135-day pause in fighting, broken into three phases.
