Arafat, Prime Minister Meet Over Cabinet

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met Saturday with Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia in an effort to finalize a new Palestinian Cabinet, which has been in limbo for weeks amid a dispute between the two leaders.

The two men on Friday resolved their disagreement over who would get the key interior minister post and appeared close to resolving a dispute over control of security forces, a Palestinian official said.

With that standoff nearing resolution, Qureia was expected to announce the makeup of the Cabinet later Saturday. Palestinian officials said a parliamentary vote on the new government would likely happen in the next few days.

The new Cabinet was expected to return Nabil Shaath to his post as foreign minister and Salam Fayad as finance minister. Saeb Erekat is also expected to return to the government along with several veteran politicians.

The long-awaited appointment of a new Cabinet would clear the way for a renewal of high-level talks with Israel and could create some momentum for the stalled “road map” peace plan.

The disagreement between Arafat and Qureia had help up the formation of a new government for more than a month. During that time, Qureia headed an emergency, skeleton Cabinet.

The progress on forming an official Cabinet came after a late Friday meeting involving Qureia, Arafat and top officials in Arafat’s Fatah movement. Afterward, a Fatah official said Arafat and the prime minister agreed on the appointment of longtime Arafat confidant Hakam Bilawi as interior minister.

It was an apparent concession by Qureia, who had insisted for weeks on the appointment of Gen. Nasser Yousef. It wasn’t clear what role, if any, Yousef would play in the new government.

Also at issue in the dispute was the role an interior minister would play in directing Palestinian security forces. Qureia wanted the security forces – some of which are now under the command of Arafat – consolidated under Yousef’s authority. Arafat refused.

In another apparent concession by Qureia, the two men agreed that control of security forces would not be placed under the interior ministry, but under a 12-member national security council headed by Arafat, according to an official close to the prime minister.

The United States and Israel have been trying to isolate Arafat and reduce his authority over the Palestinian government.

U.S. officials had pushed for consolidation of the disparate security forces under control of the prime minister as a precursor for a crackdown on extremist militant groups responsible for regular attacks against Israel. However, Qureia has said he prefers a negotiated end to violence, not a crackdown.

In violence Friday, Israeli troops killed three Palestinians, including a 10-year-old boy and a gunman. Soldiers also caught a top Islamic Jihad fugitive suspected of having plotted several major suicide bombings, including an Oct. 4 attack that killed 21 people in a Haifa restaurant.

Meanwhile, a symbolic Mideast peace deal won praise from Secretary of State Colin Powell, the second senior U.S. official in a week to express support for such “freelance” initiatives at a time of deadlock over the road map.

Powell’s letter to the authors of the so-called Geneva Accord, made public Friday, was seen by some as a veiled rebuke to Israel’s hard-line prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who has attacked the agreement as subversive.

The road map details steps toward ending three years of violence and establishing a Palestinian state by 2005, but does not detail national borders.

The Geneva agreement fills that gap, calling for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, virtually all of the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Its authors say it is compatible with the U.S.-backed plan.

The new plan was drafted by prominent Palestinians and Israelis, including participants in past negotiations. It proposes a Palestinian state on nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza – land Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. Most Jewish settlers would have to leave their homes.

The proposal would also give Palestinians control of a disputed holy shrine in Jerusalem’s walled Old City – an elevated mosque compound that was once home to the biblical Jewish temples. In return, Palestinians would give up their demand for the “right of return” of about 4 million Palestinian war refugees and their descendants to Israel.

Powell’s letter came a week after Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz – the Pentagon’s No. 2 official – praised another unofficial peace plan drawn up by Sari Nusseibeh, a prominent Palestinian moderate, and Ami Ayalon, former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service.