GAZA CITY, Dec 2: Palestinians accused Israel of violating a fragile Gaza Strip ceasefire on Saturday as Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas met European diplomats in a string of meetings aimed at reviving stalled peace talks.

Palestinian security sources said an Israeli naval vessel dealt the truce a fresh blow when it fired at three Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of Rafah in south Gaza.

But the Israeli military emphatically rejected the reports.

“We categorically deny the existence of this incident,” a spokeswoman told AFP. “There were no shootings by any navy boat this morning.”

If the Palestinian allegations are true, it would be the first time Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement since it took effect last Sunday at dawn.

The reported incident came hours before Abbas sat down with the foreign ministers of Austria and Germany, Ursula Plassinik and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the European Union's top diplomat Javier Solana, amid revived hopes of restarting the stalled Middle East peace process.

The meetings dealt with “how to revive the peace process,” Abbas told reporters.

Steinmeier said he was optimistic that peace talks would soon resume.

“I am convinced that the possibilities (for progress in the peace process) have improved because the people in Palestine and in Israel do not want to suffer any longer,” Steinmeier told reporters after his meeting with Abbas.

Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, meanwhile, was in Qatar on Saturday where he met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of the Asian Games.Ahmadinejad told Haniya that Israel is sliding towards disappearance, Iranian media reports said.

The flurry of diplomatic meetings for both Abbas and Haniya comes on the heels of Abbas' meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Jericho on Thursday in which both called for a total ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants.

In addition to bolstering the ceasefire and reviving peace talks, the meetings with EU diplomats also dealt with the spiralling economic crisis in the Palestinian territories, Abbas told reporters.

The EU, the US and Israel have all enforced a crippling aid freeze on the Palestinian Authority since the Islamist Hamas movement took power in March.

After his meeting with Abbas, who on Friday declared unity government talks with Hamas dead, Solana said the ruling Islamists had squandered an opportunity to end the siege.

“I can say that (Hamas) had an offer by the president (Abbas) and I think it was a very generous offer,” Solana told reporters. “It is an offer that would have resolved many of the problems facing the Palestinian people and unfortunately that offer has not been accepted,” Solana continued.

On Saturday, Israel expressed ‘deep regret’ over a series of UN General Assembly resolutions that reaffirmed the need for an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian and Syrian lands.

“We have great regret that for nearly three decades in the UN General Assembly there is a kind of tradition of automatically and unilaterally adopting resolutions which help neither the Palestinians nor Israel and which do not advance the peace process,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev told AFP.

By a vote of 157 in favour, seven against and 10 abstentions, the 192-member Assembly on Friday reiterated its demand for “the complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan (Heights).”

Assembly resolutions, unlike some adopted by the 15-member Security Council, are non-binding.—AFP