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Mahmoud Abbas to head interim Palestinian government | |
(about 2 hours later) | |
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he will head a Palestinian unity government after a second meeting with rival Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. | |
The interim government is to prepare polls in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. | |
Mr Abbas and Mr Meshaal have been holding talks in Qatar over the reconciliation deal reached in April 2011 and who would head the government. | |
Correspondents say the issue has been one of the main stumbling blocks to implementing the April agreement. | |
They say it may now be too late to organise May elections. | |
The government will be made up of technocrats and independents, reports say. | |
The reconciliation deal sought to end more than four years of separate governments in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and the West Bank, areas of which are governed by Mr Abbas's Western-backed Palestinian Authority. | |
As part of the deal, an interim unity government was to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections. | As part of the deal, an interim unity government was to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections. |
But Hamas strongly opposed Mr Abbas's initial choice of Salam Fayyad, the current prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. |