Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter held talks with the exiled political leader of Palestinian militant group Hamas on Friday as part of a controversial trip that has drawn fierce criticism from Israel and U.S. officials.

The meeting between Carter and Khaled Mashaal took place at Mashaal's office in the Syrian capital Damascus, Mashaal's deputy Moussa Abu Marzouk told the Associated Press.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter met with Syrian President Bashar Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus, Syria, on Friday.
(Bassem Tellawi/Associated Press)

Carter, who has characterized his trip to the Middle East as a private peace mission, also met Syrian President Bashar Assad shortly after he arrived in Damascus on Friday.

Carter's trip has angered Israeli officials, who have shunned the former president, and also drawn condemnation by the White House. Dozens of congressmen, both Democratic and Republican, have written to Carter asking him not to meet with Hamas officials.

Both the U.S. and Israel have designated the virulently anti-Western Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, as a terrorist group.

Hamas won a majority in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, but was kicked out of a coalition government by the West Bank-based President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas fighters seized control of the Gaza Strip last June.

Hamas officials said the meetings have lent their group legitimacy.

Israel has accused Mashaal of masterminding the kidnapping of soldier Gilad Shalit near Gaza two years ago. Israel has also blamed the group's Damascus-based leadership for directing suicide bombings, including the September 2004 attacks that killed 16 Israelis in the southern city of Beersheba.

Yishai, the Israeli deputy prime minister, and the only Israeli minister to meet with Carter, said Friday he asked him to arrange a meeting with Hamas to try to win the release of Shalit. But Hamas said Friday Shalit will "not see the light" until Palestinian prisoners are also released in an exchange.

Earlier in his trip, Carter sparked controversy after he hugged a senior Hamas politician, a move Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said "dignified" a group committed to Israel's destruction.

He also laid a wreath at the grave site of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom the U.S. and Israel blamed for the breakdown of peace talks and subsequent wave of violence.

No agreement without Hamas: Carter

But the Nobel Peace laureate has rejected criticism about his trip, arguing that isolating Hamas does little to spur on the peace process between Palestinians and Israelis.

"You can't have an agreement that must involve certain parties, unless you talk to those parties to conclude the agreement," he said in a speech at the American University in Cairo. "You have to involve Hamas … They have to be involved in some way."

Carter said he told Hamas leaders from Gaza that they should stop rocket attacks on Israel, which have prompted deadly Israeli military assaults on the crowded Mediterranean coastal territory.

Any killing of civilians is "an act of terrorism," he said.

But Carter also said that for every Israeli killed in combat, between 30 to 40 Palestinians are killed because of the extreme military capability of Israel.

He also said that the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which has left the territory short of fuel and consumer goods, is an "atrocity." Israel has said the blockade is part of a crackdown spurred by increased Palestinian rocket attacks in southern Israel.

With files from the Associated Press