Middle East: US, European and Arab leaders were last night urging President Yasser Arafat to drop his objections to the Palestinian Authority prime minister-designate Mahmoud Abbas's ministerial team, and thus enable the swearing in of the cabinet tomorrow, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem
This would, it is hoped, pave the way for a return to Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
But Mr Arafat, who recognises his capitulation to Mr Abbas might mark the effective end of his era as the omnipotent symbol of the Palestinian cause, is proving hard to shift. He has been unmoved by Mr Abbas's repeated threats to resign before ever taking office.
To the dismay of international would-be peacemakers but with the support of most Palestinian legislators and much of the public, Mr Arafat has rejected several of Mr Abbas's proposed appointments, including that of key security chief Mr Mohammad Dahlan, and insists 14 of the 24 ministers must be his loyalists.
If Mr Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) does not present his cabinet for approval by the Palestinian Legislative Council tomorrow, PA regulations would require Mr Arafat to nominate an alternative candidate, who would then begin the whole process of choosing a cabinet all over again.
But the US has said it will formally present the internationally backed "road map" to Palestinian statehood only when Mr Abbas is confirmed in office, and Israel has promised a series of confidence-building measures to help boost his standing.
Any other prime-ministerial candidate would be regarded by the US and Israel as an Arafat-controlled puppet, failing to fulfil President Bush's explicit demand, as a precondition for diplomatic progress, that the PA select an alternative leadership "not compromised by terrorism".
Nominally, the dispute between Mr Arafat and the man who has been at his side for more than 40 years is about Mr Abbas's appointment of Mr Dahlan as minister of the interior, with overall responsibility for security and thus for thwarting Hamas and other extremist groups.
The battle of wills is for still higher stakes: effective control of the Palestinian Authority. If Mr Abbas prevails, Mr Arafat will essentially have been sidelined. If Mr Arafat prevails, the international and domestic pressure for him to delegate authority to a prime minister will have been deflected, the PA president's power will remain intact, but Israel and the US will continue to refuse to deal with the authority.
Significantly, while aides to Mr Arafat said yesterday there was no shortage of prime-ministerial candidates, it was the EU's representative here, Mr Miguel Moratinos, who told Mr Arafat no other candidate would be acceptable to the international community. Europe has generally taken a more sympathetic approach to Mr Arafat than the Israeli government or the Bush administration.
Mr Nabil Sha'ath, the PA planning minister and one of the reputed alternative candidates, said there was "no chance" of Mr Abbas meeting tomorrow's deadline because of the "deep crisis" over the cabinet team.
But Mr Imad Shakur, who was mediating between the two protagonists, asserted a compromise would yet be found. "They've had problems for 40 years," he said, "but they're still together."
Without Mr Dahlan in the interior ministry post, however, Mr Abbas, who enjoys negligible popular Palestinian support, would have little chance of prevailing over the extremists. Yet Mr Arafat is adamant there can be no place at the cabinet table for Mr Dahlan, an out-of-favour former confidant.
Indeed, aides to Mr Arafat yesterday tauntingly branded Mr Dahlan - who is said to have urged Mr Arafat to accept the peace deal he rejected at the Camp David summit in 2000 - as "the CIA's man".