Syria must play ''a positive role'' in resolving the Gaza conflict by persuading hardliners in the militant Islamist group Hamas to keep the peace, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Monday.
Frattini said the Hamas leaders in Damascus had shown ''a harder-line stance than the Hamas leadership in Gaza, who would probably have liked an earlier and more lasting ceasefire''.
The Italian foreign minister, who is leaving Monday for a tour of Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories, added that he would have ''contacts'' in the next few days with Syria, which did not attend Sunday's summit between Arab and European Union leaders at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Israeli forces kept pulling out of Gaza Monday in a tentative truce after a devastating three-week war.
Hamas and Israeli declared separate ceasefires Sunday.
Some 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the war while Israel lost ten soldiers as well as three civilians killed by rockets.
