GAZA CITY, 13 October 2005 — Defying calls by legislators, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei said yesterday his government would not quit before its mandatory resignation next month.

Qorei said that, as dictated by an election law, the Cabinet would remain in place until next month when it would be required to leave office to allow time to prepare for a legislative ballot in January.

“We are staying until the elections campaign begins,” he told reporters. “We are at a critical crossroad. We are coming closer to elections. We have to impose law and order.”

The Palestinian Parliament had voted to accept a committee report that said the Cabinet mishandled its response to factional anarchy in Gaza that worsened after Israel’s pullout last month, and urged President Mahmoud Abbas to form a new government.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian ministerial commission’s inquiry into the causes of the death of Yasser Arafat last November has proved inconclusive, Qorei said yesterday.

“The government will on Wednesday publish the report of the ministerial commission into the death of Yasser Arafat, which will include the report of the French hospital where he was treated,” Qorei told reporters in Ramallah.

“The French and Palestinian doctors have concluded that there was no known cure for the illness that afflicted the president.” Qorei said the death of the long-time Palestinian leader was not a result of “bacteria, nor a virus, a microbe, a cancerous tumor nor of AIDS as has been said.” “Even the possibility of poisoning was examined, but no known poison has been detected,” he added.

Also, Palestinian gunmen released a US and a British journalist unharmed hours after kidnapping them in the Gaza Strip yesterday, the Palestinian Interior Ministry said.

The reporter and photographer working for Knight Ridder newspapers were handed over to Palestinian security forces near the town of Khan Younis following negotiations for their freedom, Interior Ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said.

In another development, Israeli forces arrested overnight a West Bank leader of the Hamas movement who had been wanted for nearly a decade, according to security sources yesterday.

Ibrahim Ghneimat was arrested in the village of Sourif, near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, in an operation involving the army, police and the Shin Beth interal security service, the sources said.

— With input from agencies