Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom met on the sidelines of a world information summit in the Tunisian capital Tunis on Wednesday, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported.

The newspaper quoted Israeli officials as saying that the two met by accident and held 30-minute-long talks.

Abbas said he was satisfied about a US-brokered agreement reached on Tuesday between the Palestinians and Israel to re-open the Rafah crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border on Nov. 25, according to the report.

The Palestinian leader also voiced hope that the agreement, lauded by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a "big step forward", can lead to renewed peace negotiations, it added.

Shalom, on his part, re-asserted Israel's displeasure over the participation of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Jan. 25 Palestinian parliamentary elections.

Hamas has vowed to destroy Israel and staged rocket and suicide attacks on Israel in the past.

The meeting between Abbas and Shalom, who are both in Tunis for a UN-sponsored three-day summit on information, was the highest-level contact between the two sides since a conference between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in June.

A recent upsurge of violence has prompted Israel to freeze high-level contacts with the Palestinians.

Shalom is the first Israeli foreign minister to visit the Arab country of Tunisia.

Israel has recently exerted more efforts to improve its relations with the Arab world fretted by the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Currently, only two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan, have inked peace agreements with the Jewish state.

(Xinhua News Agency November 17, 2005)