BERLIN, June 25 (UPI) -- A high-ranking Berlin conference on Middle East security kicked off with eclat and ended with a pledge for $242 million in aid money for the Palestinian authorities.

The conference had just started when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice intervened for the first time. Although the protocol had left no room for debate, Rice spoke up after Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mussa had indicated the West should start negotiating with hamas, the Sunni Islamist group that is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union and, at the same time, is the legitimately elected leadership of the Palestinian National Authority.

"You cannot have peace if there is not a partner who respects the right of the other partner to exist," Rice said in an obvious reference to Hamas, in the first tense exchange at the one-day conference in Berlin's Foreign Ministry.

She later received backing from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the conference host: "We should not give up the Quartet criteria," that demand from Hamas to renounce violence and accept Israel's right to exist, "which are the basis for every cooperation."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, currently touring the Middle East, gave his backing to that strategy Tuesday at a news conference in Bethlehem: "We talk with the people of peace, and not with the ones who place bombs," he said.