TEHRAN, 14 October 2007 — Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged Arab nations yesterday to boycott a Middle East peace meeting in the United States, while also accusing Washington of responsibility for all of Iraq’s woes.

“The United States took the initiative for this meeting to save the Zionist regime (Israel), which received a beating at the hands of Hezbollah,” during the war last year with the Lebanese Shiite movement, Khamenei told a crowd of hundreds of thousands at Iran’s Grand Mosque.

“Every conference that has been organized in the name of peace has harmed the Palestinians,” he said, in a speech to mark Iran’s celebration of the Eid Al-Fitr holiday.

“As the Palestinians themselves are not participating in this conference, how can the others (Arab states) do so,” he asked, as the crowds chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” Khamenei made no reference to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who will be attending the US-sponsored meeting, expected next month, and who has been working in concert with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to prepare for the summit, aimed at seeking an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Instead, he spoke of the Islamist movement Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June after bloody battles with security forces loyal to Abbas, and which has also called for a boycott of the peace talks.

Following the Gaza takeover, Abbas dismissed Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and appointed a new government, which Hamas does not recognize, and whose power is limited to the West Bank.

Referring to Hamas, Khamenei said the “Palestinian people put in power a government that has made resistance its leading slogan and, despite all pressure, the Palestinian government and people continue to resist.”

“I counsel our Palestinian brothers not to confront each other, because the enemy is in their house.”

On Friday, Haniyeh warned Abbas against making concessions to Israel at the summit. “There will be a new peace conference later this year, but this conference will bring great losses, not only for the Palestinian cause but the entire Arab and Muslim world,” he said.

Haniyeh called on Abbas to “reject new concessions to the Israeli occupation, on the refugees, on the land, on Jerusalem, to our sacred right to that holy land.” He went on to accuse Israel of using the conference as a way of naturalizing relations with Arab countries “without giving anything to the Palestinian people” and America of using the conference to advance its regional interests.

His remarks come with Israeli and Palestinian teams preparing the ground for the conference.

The Palestinians want a detailed agreement and timeframe for implementing solutions to the thorniest issues in the conflict, including borders, sovereignty over Jerusalem and the fate of 4.4 million refugees.

The Israelis want a vaguer document with core issues left to bilateral talks after the conference.

Turning his attention to the United States and Iraq, Khamenei said it “is incapable of assuring security, either because it does not want to or because it cannot. It is responsible for all of the humanitarian, political, social and economic catastrophes that have befallen Iraq.”

Meanwhile, a pre-dawn Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun yesterday killed a Hamas fighter and wounded at least five people, witnesses and Palestinian medics said.

Hassan Naeem, 20, a fighter from the armed wing of Hamas, was killed and five other people, including at least two fighters, were wounded in the strike, a medical official said.

The Israeli Army confirmed the attack, which it said came in response to a mortar fired from the town, which sits near the wall separating the isolated coastal enclave from southern Israel.

“There was an attack against a launching cell,” an Israeli Army spokesman said. “They launched a mortar shell, and after they launched we attacked, and identified a hit.”

Israel has carried out near-daily airstrikes and raids in the Gaza Strip in recent months targeting those it accuses of firing mortars and homemade rockets into nearby Israeli towns and fields.