Senior Hamas leader Mussa Abu Marzuk said on Tuesday there is "a chance" that his Palestinian Islamist movement at war with Israel will accept a modified Egyptian ceasefire plan for Gaza.
An Egyptian diplomat, meanwhile, urged the Islamists to sign up "now" in the hope of announcing a ceasefire by the end of the week, before US president-elect Barack Obama takes office.
"There is a chance that we will accept the Egyptian plan," provided the "substantial observations" of Hamas are taken into account, Abu Marzuk, the Damascus-based deputy head of its politburo, told Al-Jazeera television.
"If the initiative is accepted, it will be in accordance with the position set out by Hamas at the start, namely an Israeli withdrawal, a ceasefire and the opening of the crossing points" between Gaza and Israel, Abu Marzuk said.
His comments came as a Hamas delegation held a fresh round of talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman in Cairo.
A senior Egyptian diplomat told AFP, requesting anonymity, that negotiators wanted the Islamists to sign up "now" in the hope of announcing a ceasefire by the end of the week.
"We're working seriously with Hamas, we need to end the vagueness and they need to say 'yes', now, to our plan," he said.
"Egypt hopes that the Israeli war machine can be stopped by the end of the week and the massacres can be ended," with more than 900 Palestinians dead and 4,000 already wounded in the conflict which erupted on December 27, he said.
The plan calls for a ceasefire for a pre-determined time, securing tunnels which Israel says are used to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza, opening the embattled enclave's borders and restarting Palestinian reconciliation talks.
The diplomat said that Israel "appears now to agree" with the truce plan launched by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a week ago, but Hamas is having difficulty signing up to it.
"Hamas delegates coming from Damascus demonstrate the luxury of patience while those from Gaza are in more of a hurry to end it," the diplomat said. "Syria could clearly play a more positive role."
The Hamas negotiating team is made up of five officials, three from the exiled political leadership in Damascus and two from the Gaza Strip.
"The problem is that until now there have been no real negotiations, no engagement or clear answers from them," the diplomat said.
The Syria-based Hamas delegates have been shuttling between Cairo and Damascus for the past few days, reporting their talks to the exiled leadership.
Two of the divisive issues are the possible presence of a multinational observer force on the Palestinian side of Egypt's 14-kilometre (nine-mile) border with Egypt and the duration of an eventual truce.
"Hamas says it doesn't want this force while Israel does, and the Jewish state wants an indefinite truce and the Islamists want it to be for a fixed period of time, around six months," the diplomat said.
He said that Israel's main negotiator, senior defence official Amos Gilad, was "ready and waiting" to return to Cairo, after an initial round of talks with Egypt's Suleiman.
The two men brokered the last six-month Israel-Hamas truce which ended in December, heralding the latest violence. Suleiman has negotiated previous truces with different Palestinian factions in 2001, 2003 and 2005.
"It appears, through various signals, that Israel accepts our plan but is not ready to announce it publicly," the Egyptian diplomat said.
Another key element on the Palestinian side is a reconciliation process aimed at bringing Hamas and the rival Fatah of president Mahmud Abbas -- who reigns in the occupied West Bank -- back together again.
