RAMALLAH/WASHINGTON — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he failed to achieve any progress in Middle East peace talks with President George W. Bush and was returning home with little to show for his visit.

The Hamas movement immediately called on Abbas to “officially announce the failure of peace talks with the (Israeli) occupation and to return to internal national dialogue.” Hamas’ spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said yesterday Abbas’ visit to US “ended without any results, and that’s what Abbas himself confirmed,” adding that Abbas’ statement is “an evidence that Bush’s declarations regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state are lies and illusions, mainly after he told Abbas that he will put another definition for the Palestinian state.”

The Hamas spokesman said that Bush’s stance “will bring back the peace talks to the zero point, and considered it as a clear US rejection for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the June 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital.”

Abbas arrived in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh yesterday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak. He is to brief Mubarak this morning on his latest visits to Washington and Moscow, the official MENA news agency reported.

Earlier, the Palestinian leader sounded pessimistic on Friday about the prospects of achieving any deal with Israel this year despite a big US push that began five months ago at a summit in Annapolis, Md. “Frankly, so far nothing has been achieved. But we are still conducting direct work to have a solution,” Abbas said. The biggest obstacle, he said, is Israel’s continued expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian-occupied territories.

“We demanded the Americans implement the first phase of the road map that talks about the cessation of settlement expansion,” Abbas said, expressing disappointment the US hasn’t exerted more pressure on Israel to stop. “This is the biggest blight that stands as a big rock in the path of negotiations.”

He warned of an “extremely difficult impasse” if a peace deal is not reached with Israel before Bush leaves office in January. “If President Bush’s term ends without an accord we will find ourselves at an extremely difficult impasse, and we Palestinians will have to look at what measures we can take if that is the case,” Abbas said on board his flight back to the Middle East which made a stopover in Scotland.

Israel, however, is pushing forward with controversial building projects on disputed land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and is refusing to take down illegal settlement outposts, release Palestinian prisoners, halt military incursions, and dismantle roadblocks that severely disrupt daily life.

Abbas’ aides said he also was upset after his lunch Thursday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. While discussing what a peace deal would look like, Rice did not mention the Palestinian goal of creating a state based on borders before Israel captured Palestinian land during the 1967 Mideast war. “We demanded that they talk about the 1967 borders,” Abbas told AP, showing a rare flash of anger. “None of them talks about the 1967 borders.” Asked whether US officials offered any new proposals, Abbas said, no.

“They are exerting efforts. And we are still negotiating,” he said, but he noted that no progress had been made on any of the core issues.

Abbas said the one thing he did achieve during his US visit was to lay out the Palestinian conditions for any peace deal and press his case that he cannot go for any partial agreement because the Palestinian people would not accept it.

In Doha, Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal said yesterday his movement is awaiting an official Israeli response to a truce offer in the Gaza Strip, even though Israel has already poured cold water on it.

— With input from agencies