Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas launched a bitter attack on the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza on Tuesday as a divided nation marked the fourth anniversary of historic leader Yasser Arafat's death.

Abbas accused Hamas of sabotaging efforts to mend the rift in Palestinian ranks created by its bloody seizure of the Gaza Strip last year and of using force to prevent any commemorations for Arafat in the coastal territory.

In his speech delivered besides Arafat's graveside at his political headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Abbas blamed Hamas for the abandonment of planned reconciliation talks due to have been held in Cairo on Sunday, accusing it of "not wanting dialogue."

He charged that the Islamists had invented "false pretexts" for not showing up at the scheduled talks with the other Palestinian factions in the Egyptian capital.

"They missed this opportunity and I am talking of the Hamas leadership here."

Abbas again insisted that his security services were not holding Hamas activists as "political prisoners" in the West Bank as the Islamists have charged.

He noted that his government was continuing to pay the salaries of some 77,000 civil servants in Gaza despite the Hamas "putsch". "As for them, they smuggle in money arms and drugs through tunnels (from neighbouring Egypt) and do business."

Abbas also accused Hamas of blocking any commemorative events for Arafat in the Gaza Strip "under the threat of armed force".

Unlike in the West Bank, where thousands of Palestinians turned out to hear Abbas give his address which was also carried live by Palestinian television, no events were planned in Gaza.

An organising committee made up of all the main Palestinian factions except the Islamists accused Hamas of refusing authorisation to hold any commemoration in the territory.

But the Hamas-run interior ministry said it had received no such request and that it had a responsibility to maintain order.

Last year, a massive memorial rally in Gaza was marred by violence when Hamas police opened fire on the crowd, killing eight people and wounding 130.

The Islamists seized power in the territory in June last year after a week of deadly street fighting with forces loyal to Arafat's and Abbas's secular Fatah faction.

The takeover, which confined Abbas's rule to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and split the Palestinians into two hostile camps, was followed by the ransacking by Hamas supporters of Arafat's former residence in the Gaza Strip.

Nayef Harbiyat, 83, who had travelled to the Ramallah memorial ceremony from Dhahiriya at the other end of the West Bank, bemoaned the loss of the historic Palestinian leader.

"With every year that has passed, people realise how much he protected our people. Four years after his death, we are enduring insurmountable divisions."

Maan Ahmad, 16, agreed. "If Arafat were still alive, all of this would never have happened," he said.