CAIRO - President Mahmoud Abbas will meet with Khalid Mashaal in Egypt on Nov. 24, a source in Cairo said Saturday. Abbas will meet the Hamas leader to discuss implementation of a reconciliation deal signed in May, said the source, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Egypt has hosted three meetings over the past week in preparation for unity talks. Hamas official Ahmed Yousef, meanwhile, told Ma'an that the upcoming meeting would decisively end several points of disagreement between the parties. Previous delays in implementing the reconciliation deal between the former rival factions were due to President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas' September bid for Palestine's membership in the UN, he said. Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad and Hamas representative Mousa Abu Marzouq met in Cairo on Thursday and discussed a number of candidates for the prime minister post, Yousef said. "Ismail Haniyeh and Salam Fayyad were causes of disagreement in the previous stage, and so both will be exempted," he added. Senior Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad told a local radio station on Monday that Hamas and Fatah had agreed on several controversial issues within the reconciliation deal. It will be the first meeting between Mashaal and Abbas since they signed a May deal in the Egyptian capital to end years of rivalry between Hamas and the president's Fatah party that split Palestinians into separate administrations in the West Bank and Gaza. The agreement set out a path for the creation of a transitional government of technocrats, but has yet to be fully implemented.
