ANKARA (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan late Monday to discuss the indirect talks that Turkey is mediating between the Jewish state and Syria.

On his short visit to the Turkish capital, Olmert was expected to thank Turkey for its efforts to work out an eventual peace between the two neighbouring nations, which have been in a state of war since 1948, according to a diplomatic source.

In a related development Erdogan told Hamas on Monday he would ask Olmert to lift the blockade of Gaza, a spokesman for the Islamist movement said.

Ismail Haniya, the prime minister in the Hamas government of Gaza, “had a telephone conversation with Erdogan who told him of his intention to ask Olmert to end aggressions and the siege of Gaza,” spokesman Taher al-Nunu said.

Israeli and Syrian negotiators have met four times since May with Turkish diplomats in Istanbul, but so far without any evident results.

However, the indirect talks are a sign that Turkey, a Muslim but secular state, wants to play a significant role in resolving the conflicts in the Middle East.

Erdogan’s chief adviser, Ahmed Davutoglu, an academic who holds the rank of ambassador, has visited Israel and Syria several times, as well as the Palestinian territories and the capitals of Arab states, to put out feelers if conditions are ripe for negotiating an accord.

Olmert, who is resigning under the cloud of a corruption probe, said on Thursday that “a peace accord with Syria was within the realm of possibility.”

He will remain in office until a new government is formed following Israel’s legislative elections set for February 10.

But the leading challenger to succeed him, opposition hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu, has dismissed Olmert’s peace efforts, saying Friday any concessions he might make “do not and will not obligate a government that I shall head.”

In exchange for peace, the Syrians want the return of all of the Golan Heights which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in 1981, a move never recognised by the international community.

Israel for its part is calling on Damascus to sever its ties with the current regime in Iran and stop its support for militants, namely the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas movements.

Olmert also met with Turkish President Abdullah Gul and held a working dinner with Erdogan. No press conference had been announced.