Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal were on Thursday to discuss reforming the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in a bid to allow the Islamist movement to join. The two men began meeting in Cairo at around midday (1000 GMT) for talks marking the culmination of three days of discussions between Hamas, Fatah and the other 13 Palestinian factions aimed at thrashing out a stalled unity deal.
Islamic Jihad is also hoping to join the PLO and the group’s leader, Ramadan Shallah, will attend the talks along with all the other faction heads, members of the PLO Executive Committee and the speaker of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), Selim Zaanoun. Fatah delegation chief Azzam al-Ahmed said the meeting would look at the possibility of setting up a new PLO leadership body which would be “the first concrete application of the Cairo agreement, of the reconciliation and of the partnership between all the political forces”.
