HOLY LAND: THE INK IS NOT EVEN DRY ON "THE MECCA AGREEMENT", OBSTACLES ARE EMERGING

Palestinians to meet as unity deal hits snags

GAZA CITY - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and prime minister Ismail Haniya were expected to meet on Thursday in a bid to settle last-minute differences that could endanger the creation of a unity government.

“The president and a delegation from Fatah are going to go to Gaza to meet Haniya and Hamas with a view to starting the constitutional procedure to form a unity government,” Azzam Al Ahmed, Fatah leader in parliament, told AFP.

“Obstacles have started to emerge and we are going to try to overcome them in order to put a unity government in place as quickly as possible,” he said.

Under a landmark power-sharing agreement reached only last week, Abbas’s moderate Fatah party and Haniya’s radical Hamas are to form their first unity cabinet in an effort to end deadly infighting and a crippling Western boycott.

Abbas had been expected to formally charge Haniya with putting together the government on Thursday, but late Wednesday cancelled a televised address billed as a prelude to the nomination process, after hiccups emerged.

Presidential aides accused the current Hamas-led government of demanding, before resigning, that Abbas approve nominations of senior officials and the Hamas candidate for interior minister, who will control some security services.

They also said disagreements had emerged on the division of portfolios between Fatah and Hamas in the incoming cabinet.

But Hamas, which is blacklisted as a terrorist group by the West, sought to minimise the differences, saying the government had not laid down conditions but wanted “further discussions” with Abbas on the three contested points.

Haniya had been due to submit his resignation as head of the current Hamas-led administration before having five weeks to put together the new cabinet and get it passed through parliament.

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