DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) – Syrian officials stepped into the increasingly bitter dispute among the Palestinian leadership, successfully negotiating a crucial meeting on Sunday between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’ exiled chief.

The meeting, originally scheduled for Saturday and abruptly canceled, had raised expectations that Abbas and Khaled Mashaal could make headway in forming a national unity government and end months of deadly Palestinian infighting that has claimed at least 62 lives.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas’ politburo, said that “active and serious mediation” by Syria succeeded in convincing Abbas and Mashaal to hold the long-negotiated meeting after all, later Sunday.

Abbas and Mashaal met separately with Syria’s vice president, Farouk al-Sharaa, after the original talks were postponed.

Hamas swept to power in elections last year and controls the Palestinian parliament and Cabinet, but it is labeled by the U.S. as a terrorist group and its refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist led to a Western sanctions that have paralyzed the Palestinian economy. Abbas, who leads the Fatah party and is widely seen as a moderate, was elected president separately.

Syria hosts the exiled leadership of a number of Palestinian militant groups – among them Mashaal, who has lived in Damascus since 1997, when he survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan.

Abu Marzouk told The Associated Press that the main sticking point in coalition talks were the conditions under which Abbas would name a new prime minister for the national unity government – such as Hamas recognizing Israel’s right to exist and abiding by past agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians.

Hamas has said it would be willing to respect only those previous agreements it deemed as fair to the Palestinians. This falls short of international community’s and Israeli demands that all earlier accords be recognized by Hamas.

There had been hopes that the Abbas and Mashaal, who last met in July 2005, could end the yearlong political deadlock between the militant Hamas, which controls the Palestinian parliament and Cabinet, and Abbas’ more moderate Fatah movement.

The thorniest issues are control of the two factions’ security forces and Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel.

Western nations are demanding that the militant Islamic group accept Israel’s existence and renounce violence as a condition for ending the economic boycott they imposed on the Palestinian Authority after Hamas won legislative elections last year.

Abbas has been pushing Hamas for months to form a unity government of independent experts in hopes of ending the sanctions and has threatened to call early elections if the two sides cannot agree.

Abbas came to Damascus bolstered by Israel’s release to him on Friday of $100 million in frozen Palestinian taxes that Israel has refused to turn over to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian government.

Israel said the money would be used by Abbas for humanitarian purposes and to strengthen his security forces.

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Associated Press writers Albert Aji and Sarah El Deeb contributed to this report.