A Fatah official said on Tuesday that Fatah and Hamas have been holding secret talks in Cairo in the past few weeks in a bid to reach an agreement on the formation of a Palestinian unity government and new presidential and parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories. The discussions came on the eve of a planned meeting between PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in the Egyptian capital next week. Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official in the West Bank, revealed Tuesday that he had held a secret meeting in Cairo with Musa Abu Marzouk, the Syrian-based deputy head of the Hamas "political bureau." Al-Ahmed said that he held several meetings with Abu Marzouk "in order to create a positive atmosphere" ahead of the Abbas-Mashaal summit. The Fatah official voiced optimism regarding the prospects of success of the planned summit saying the two parties had made "good preparations" ahead of the meeting. He said that Abbas was planning to propose to Mashaal that they hold new elections in March next year. Fatah and Hamas announced last May that they had reached an agreement to end their differences. However, the agreement was never implemented due to sharp differences between the two parties over a number of issues, first and foremost the identity of the prime minister who would head a new unity government. Hamas's refusal to accept current Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as head of the proposed government was the major obstacle to achieving reconciliation between the two sides. But an announcement by Fayyad earlier this week that he would be prepared to step down to pave the way for the implementation of a Fatah-Hamas unity deal now seems to have paved the way for rapprochement between the two parties.
