Cairo, October 06: Rival Palestinian factions are to sign a long-delayed reconciliation deal in Cairo on October 26, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said yesterday after meeting Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
“We agreed to hold a meeting for Palestinian factions in Cairo on October 25 before signing a reconciliation agreement on October 26,” he told a joint press conference with his Jordanian counterpart Nasser Judeh in Amman.
“Arab officials and maybe officials from outside the Arab world might attend the signing of the agreement.”
The announcement came shortly after Abul Gheit and Egypt’s intelligence chief Omar Suleiman held talks in Jordan’s capital with Abbas, who heads the mainstream Fatah faction. The Islamist movement Hamas and Fatah have been in dispute since a split culminated in the Islamists seizing control of Gaza in June 2007 after 18 months of shaky coalition government.
According to extracts of proposals obtained, the plan calls for both presidential and parliamentary elections to be held across the Palestinian territories in the middle of 2010.
It also calls for bolstering the Fatah-dominated security forces under Egyptian supervision and the release of prisoners in both the Gaza Strip and the Fatah-run West Bank
–Agencies–