Hamas said on Tuesday that achieving national reconciliation requires the reform of Palestine Liberation Organization.

"Any speech on reconciliation is useless without the reform of the PLO and the Palestinian National Council," said Yousef Rizka, an aide to Hamas leader Ismail Haneya in Gaza.

He called on the heads of PLO's factions to start the reform immediately.

Hamas is not represented in the PLO, which is dominated by the Fatah party of Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Rizka said that Fatah's debates on the reconciliation "are only media positions that don't represent serious political positions."

On Monday, Abbas asked members of Fatah's central committee to intensify their efforts to end the political split that followed Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza in 2007. Since that year, Abbas and Fatah have been confined to the West Bank.

Abbas told the central committee's members that Hamas should sign an Egyptian proposal for the Palestinian unity. However, Hamas, which has several reservation on the proposal, said the plan has gone with former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.