Palestinian leaders hold new talks in Cairo

---

CAIRO, Dec 22 (AFP): Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal were meeting in Cairo on Wednesday night for the second time in less than a month, for talks seeking to reconcile Palestinian rivals. The two men arrived in the Egyptian capital during the evening and began talks shortly afterwards, Azzam al-Ahmed, head of the delegation of Abbas's Fatah movement told the news agency. All the main Palestinian factions, led by the former rivals Hamas and Fatah, are meeting in the Egyptian capital seeking to thrash out ways of implementing a reconciliation deal that was signed in May but has never been implemented. Earlier on Wednesday, delegates discussed ways to reactivate the Palestinian national parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), which has been paralysed since 2007, when Hamas forced Fatah forces out of the Gaza Strip, splitting the Palestinian territories into two rival administrations. "We agreed on the need to convene the Palestinian Legislative Council in early February," independent MP Mustafa Barghuti told the news agency. "We agreed to convene the council as soon as possible and that all decisions on its operation would be taken by consensus among the parliamentary groups," he added. "A meeting of all parliamentary groups in the West Bank and Gaza will be held on the 15th of next month in light of the convening of the council," Barghuti said. On Tuesday, delegates agreed to set up a new electoral commission and also set a deadline for the formation of a caretaker cabinet of independents as envisaged in the May agreement. During the talks, the factions agreed to form a nine-member Central Election Commission (CEC) under the committee's current head, Hanna Nasser.