RAMALLAH, West Bank, 8 March 2003 — Palestinian President Yasser Arafat yielded to international pressure and offered the newly created position of prime minister to Mahmud Abbas, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s No. 2 and co-founder of the Fatah movement, Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmad Qorei said.
Arafat “proposed during a meeting of the (PLO) executive committee to name Abu Mazen to the prime minister’s post,” Qorei said. However, he said Abbas, 68, who serves as secretary-general of the PLO executive and as Arafat’s right-hand man, refused to immediately accept the post because he wanted more information on what his future role would be.
Abbas, alias Abu Mazen, a noted pragmatist and veteran of the peace process, does not enjoy wide popular support but is a seasoned politician and a prominent figure in the 1993 Oslo accords. “This is a positive and needed step. In the current system, nobody has the right to question Arafat, and Palestinian MPs need a prime minister who is accountable,” Qorei told reporters.
“Abu Mazen is one of our most capable leaders, he helped establish the PLO and is pragmatic. God help him in his mission,” he added.
However, Abu Mazen, has not yet accepted the offer and demanded more details on his prerogatives, indicating he was not willing to become Arafat’s puppet and hoped to seize executive power, sidelining his comrade into the ceremonial role favored by Washington. “Abu Mazen is waiting to see what authority he will have as prime minister,” Qorei said.
Abbas has been a front-runner to fill the prime minister’s job Arafat pledged to create under international pressure to reform, and he recently announced a yearlong “demilitarization” of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
The policy-making PLO Central Council is to meet today in Ramallah on the appointment, while the parliamentary Palestinian Legislative Council is scheduled to convene next Monday to vote on Arafat’s choice. Concerns had been raised as to whether all members would be allowed to travel to the West Bank city, but an Israeli military administration spokesman told AFP that all authorizations had been granted.
The appointment of a strong Palestinian prime minister would be the most tangible reform undertaken by Arafat’s Palestinian Authority since coming under pressure to overhaul his administration, widely perceived as corrupt. It would also signal the end of more than three decades of undisputed leadership by Arafat.
Some members of both bodies have already been barred by Israel from traveling to the West Bank on charges of “involvement in terrorist activity” and it is still not certain they will be allowed to meet. However, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s spokesman, Raanan Gissin, has said Israel was planning no further restrictions on their movement despite a Palestinian bombing of a bus in the northern town of Haifa this week which claimed 15 other lives.
