Qaddoumi Says PLO Executive Committee Lost Legitimacy

[ 17/10/2008 - 08:25 PM ]

CAIRO, (PIC)--

PLO senior official and prominent Fat'h leader Faouq Al-Qaddoumi stated on Friday that the PLO in its current set up, especially the executive committee of the PLO lacks legitimacy.

In an interview with the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, Al-Qaddoumi said that six members of the PLO's executive committee died leaving it without the needed quorum.

"In my own opinion, any decision taken by the current executive committee of the PLO is illegal because it lacks the needed conditions, in addition to the fact that convening the committee in occupied Palestine under the Israeli occupation impugns its legitimacy and calls credibility of its decisions into question", Al-Qaddoumi underlined.

He said that the PLO should have been re-activated a long time ago, but unfortunately, he added, what was agreed upon in this regards was not carried out due to Hamas winning the elections and subsequent events.

"We had succeeded in laying out guidelines to re-activate the PLO after the death of [late Fatah leader and PA chief] Yasser Arafat, but all the efforts in this regard were frozen [by Fatah faction] after Hamas won the legislative elections in 2006."

In this regard, Al-Qaddoumi stressed the importance of including Hamas Movement (the biggest Palestinian faction in the Palestinian arena) and the Islamic Jihad into the PLO without conditions because "re-activating and reforming the PLO was a Palestinian popular demand".

Moreover, Al-Qaddoumi lashed at the PLO's executive committee meeting in occupied Palestine, describing it as "abnormal". He also accused the PA of swallowing the PLO and its departments".

Furthermore, Al-Qaddoumi condemned the PA-Israeli negotiations that, according to him, have harmed the Palestinian issue without brining any good to the Palestinian people, explaining that Israeli settlements in the West Bank, especially in occupied Jerusalem increased in number and area. "The negotiations couldn’t achieve a just settlement for the Palestinian people", he stressed.

Talking on the preparation for the long-awaited Fatah's sixth congress, Al-Qaddoumi revealed that the meeting was within sight, and that the faction was only trying to specify the time and the place to convene.

Another Fatah prominent leader Nabil Sha'ath, who is a member of Fatah's central committee, threatened to render his resignation over what he described as "Abbas's wrong practices".

He explained that he was appointed by the central committee of Fatah faction to steer the dialogue with Hamas Movement, yet, he added, president Abbas authorizes other persons [in Fatah] to negotiate and deal with the issue although he was exclusively commissioned to do the job, urging members of the central committee to support him in this regard.