Shimon Peres raises prospect of Hamas peace talks Mr Peres' remarks, quoted by Israel Radio's website, came a day after he angered ministers by praising Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority President, and criticising Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Avigdor Lieberman, the former foreign minister, for refusing to treat him as a credible negotiating partner. Talking to a gathering of Israeli ambassadors, he also said Israel needed to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians "without delay." The comments prompted senior figures in Mr Netanyahu's Likud party to accuse him of interfering in next month's general election and breaking a convention that Israeli presidents should be bipartisan figures who are above expressing party-political opinions. "He can believe in whatever he likes, but he came out in defiance of the government's policy," the Knesset speaker, Reuven Rivlin, a Likud member, told Israel Radio. He cannot meddle at a time when in less than four weeks there will be elections. Mr Peres, 89, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, for his role in the ill-fated Oslo accords. Despite spending most of his career in Israel's Labour party, he was elected president in 2007 as a member of Kadima.