A Hamas delegation led by the Islamist movement's supremo Khaled Meshaal was due to review candidates for the vacant job of Palestinian prime minister with Egyptian officials, some of its members said.
The Damascus-based chief of the Islamist movement's politburo held consultations with Hamas' Gaza leadership Monday before a scheduled meeting with Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman.
Hamas officials said on condition of anonymity that the two frontrunners for the post of prime minister left vacant by Ahmed Qorei after the movement's resounding electoral victory on January 25 were Mahmud Zahar and Ismail Haniya.
"We are going to chose the candidate who enjoys the widest Paestinian consensus because we want a government of national unity," politburo member Osama Hamdan told AFP on the phone.
Another key issue to be discussed in Cairo will be power-sharing arrangements between Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas,
from the mainstream Fatah, and the future prime minister.
"We are not asking for anything more than what Abbas had asked Abu Ammar (late leader Yasser Arafat) when he was prime minister," said Mussa Abu Marzuk, another member of the Hamas politburo.
Arafat had appointed Abbas as the first Palestinian premier in a bid to appease Israel and the international community, but Abbas resigned in 2003 following a bitter struggle over control of the security services.
Suleiman had said during a visit to Cairo by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas last week that despite Hamas's sweeping victory in the January 25 parliamentary elections, it would not be asked to form a new government if did not end violence and recognise Israel.
Recognising Israel is not an obligation for the Palestinian government, "neither on a legal nor a constitutional level because it is the responsibility of the Palestine Liberation Organisation," Abu Marzuk said Sunday.
But Hamas officials in recent days have used conciliatory language.
He said that his movement wanted to hold consultations with Abbas's mainstream Fatah for the Islamist movement's future inclusion in the PLO, which signed the 1993 Oslo peace accords with Israel.
"We have agreed with Abbas to speed up the restructuring of
the PLO. We see no reason to delay this process," Abu Marzuk said.
Previous negotiations between the two movements had stumbled over each one's representation quotas inside the umbrella organisation which is the Palestinians' main political body.
Meshaal said in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine to be published Monday that his group was willing to work with Abbas after its resounding victory and accepted agreements already signed with Israel.
"We respect him very much," Meshaal said when asked whether Abbas would remain in office alongside a Hamas-led government.
"He made it through the election with dignity and we will work with him, more than Fatah has," he said, referring to Abbas's once dominant party which was trounced by Hamas in the election.
Abbas and Hamas officials agreed Saturday to convene the Palestinian parliament on February 16 as a first step toward forming a new government.
Hamas has spearheaded a deadly wave of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel in recent years and its charter implicitly calls for the destruction of Israel.
In an interview with a Greek newspaper published Sunday, Haniya played down the threat posed by his movement to the Jewish state.
"Does someone believe that we can use guns to destroy a state that has F-16s and 200 nuclear warheads?", he said.
He also renewed Hamas' willingness to discuss a long-term truce with Israel, an issue which Hamas officials have said would also be discussed with Suleiman and other Egyptian officials.
Egypt has played a central role as mediator both between Hamas and Abbas as well as between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.