Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party on Saturday accused Hamas of seeking to foil Fatah's general congress which is going to take place in the West Bank in August.

"Hamas conducts political extortion and tries to obstruct the (Fatah) conference," said Hussein al-Sheikh, Fatah secretary general.

The accusation was made after Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas hardliner, hinted that the Islamic movement may prevent the Gaza-based Fatah officials from traveling to the holy city of Bethlehem to attend the conference if pro-Abbas forces kept arresting Hamas activists in the West Bank.

The tough statements are the latest in a series of feud that increased when Hamas routed the Palestinian National Authority's (PNA) forces in Gaza in 2007 and seized control of the coastal enclave.

"By announcing so, Hamas emphasizes its policies that are based on ruling out the others and fighting the political pluralism," al-Sheikh told Xinhua.

"For two years, Hamas has held the Gaza Strip hostage and stepped up its measures against Fatah there, trying to widen the split between the West Bank and Gaza," al-Sheikh added.

Fatah hasn't held its general conference for nearly 20 years and Abbas had been struggling until he succeeded in setting August4 as the date for the conference which representatives of every Fatah-affiliated sector would attend.

But the timing of the conference comes at the highest of the Hamas-Fatah split.

Israel has agreed to allow some 500 members of Fatah from the Gaza Strip to pass through to the West Bank, but Hamas said it will not allow anyone to leave before its security services examine the history of each nominees.

Hamas says that the PNA holds up to 700 of its supporters in the West Bank for just being affiliated with the Islamic movement.

(Xinhua News Agency July 26, 2009)