CAIRO, September 5 (RIA Novosti) - Leaders of the rival Palestinian movements, Fatah and Hamas, will separately meet in Cairo with Egyptian leadership on Saturday to discuss the current progress in inter-Palestinian dialogue.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, while Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal will hold talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman.
According to the Arab media, a meeting between Fatah and Hamas leaders has not been scheduled.
Egypt plays the role of mediator between the two Palestinian factions, which until recently had no direct dialogue. They restarted reconciliation talks after Israel's assault on Gaza at the turn of the year, which saw some 1,300 Palestinians killed and 5,000 injured.
The Hamas and Fatah movements, the largest political organizations in Palestine, split in June 2007 when Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and pushed the Fatah movement out of the enclave of 1.5 million. Hamas has since remained in power in Gaza, independent of the officially recognized government of Fatah in the West Bank, which is headed by Abbas.
Armed clashes came some 18 months after Hamas had won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006.
Fatah has renounced violence, while Hamas refuses to recognize Israel and reserves the right to use violence in its struggle to create a Palestinian state.
The six previous rounds of reconciliation talks resulted in failure. Egypt has earlier postponed the seventh and, presumably, decisive round of talks until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in late September, due to remaining disagreements between the two factions.
However, Mahmoud Abbas said on September 4 in Paris that "it would be better to wait for the presidential and parliamentary elections slated for January 24, 2010," to continue the dialogue with Hamas.
