NEW YORK (AFP) — Israel and the Palestinians could sign a peace deal within six months of an international peace conference scheduled for November, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas told AFP on Friday.

"The meeting in November should define the principles settling the questions over the final status (of the Palestinian territories)," Abbas said in an interview in New York, where he is attending the UN General Assembly.

"Then we will begin negotiations on the details under a timeframe, which ought not to exceed six months, to reach a peace treaty," he added.

The leader of the Palestinian Authority, who has met with several key foreign leaders during his stay in New York, said that the US-sponsored talks would open in Washington on November 15.

"We have noted that the whole world is interested in this meeting and attaches great hopes to its success," he added.

Abbas said that Palestinian and Israeli negotiators would start to tackle preparations for the gathering in the coming days.

"We want to prepare a framework agreement defining clear principles and without equivocation that will serve as a basis for the settlement. Immediately after the meeting we will hold negotiations on the basis of this document."

Key stumbling blocks in previous talks between Israel and the Palestinians have included the borders of a future Palestinian state, the fate of the Jewish settlements, the status of Jerusalem and the question of Palestinian refugees.

"We, the Israelis and the Arabs, must make this meeting succeed," he said.

He said the members of the Middle East quartet, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, the follow up committee of the Arab League and certain countries from G8 and the non-aligned movement should take part in the talks.

The international quartet, which groups the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia, issued a "roadmap" for Israeli-Palestinian peace in 2003 originally envisioning the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

"We hope that Syria and Lebanon will also participate in the meeting," he added. The United States announced this week that it would invite Syria to the talks, but Damascus has expressed reservations about taking part.

Asked whether an agreement could be applied in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas took power by force in June, Abbas called on the Islamist movement to "place the interests of the Palestinian people above all other considerations."

"If the situation in the Gaza Strip returns to how it was (before Hamas seized power) we will be ready to talk," he said.

But a recent flare-up in violence in the Gaza Strip, declared by Israel as a "hostile entity" and where 13 Palestinians were killed this week by Israeli attacks in response to militant rocket fire, has complicated the task.

However, Abbas remained optimistic, saying: "Any attempt at sabotage is doomed to fail."

Israel has sought to downplay expectations of the November meeting, which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has described as "not a peace conference, but rather an international meeting."

But Olmert has dismissed critics who say that Abbas, whose authority has effectively been limited to the occupied West Bank since Hamas seized Gaza, is too weak to implement any agreement.

US President George W. Bush, who is organizing November's summit, met with Abbas on Monday, but made no reference to the gathering after the talks.