Abbas's security chief quits after Gaza debacle

Ramallah, West Bank, July 27: Palestinian security chief Mohammad Dahlan quit and leaders of the secular Fatah faction announced 60 other security personnel would be court martialled for losing the Gaza Strip to Hamas.

President Mahmoud Abbas told the sources he had accepted the resignation of Dahlan, who is recovering from surgery abroad and had already been sidelined following last month's rout of his Fatah-run forces by Islamist militiamen in the coastal enclave.

''Dahlan resigned. We received his resignation letter and I accepted it. I have phoned him to inform him of my acceptance,'' Abbas said in an interview at his West Bank headquarters.

A senior Fatah official involved in the inquiry into the loss of Gaza told the sources 60 security officers, ranging in rank from captain up to brigadier-general, are likely to face court martial on the recommendation of the committee.

It is due to present its report to Abbas on Friday.

Dahlan himself, once a key figure in US-led efforts to bolster the Fatah forces against the challenge from Hamas, does not face disciplinary proceedings, the official and Abbas said.

The president said he had yet to see the report but added he would approve all recommendations made to him by the committee.

Dahlan, 46, rose through the ranks of President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah movement as a protege of the late Yasser Arafat. But he has disappointed US sponsors who hoped he could counter Hamas in both Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Abbas said he had not yet appointed a successor to him.

Jibril Rajoub, a former security chief and longtime rival of Dahlan, is widely seen as a rising influence.

US Support

Dahlan told the sources in June he expected to be blamed for Fatah's defeat ''because I wasn't there''.

US support for Fatah-run security forces has been built up this year, at first despite international sanctions against a Hamas-led government and now, since Abbas ejected Hamas from government following the rift with Gaza, as part of a wider strategy to bolster Abbas as a bastion against the Islamists.

Abbas said he still hoped to open negotiations with Israel on establishing a Palestinian state and hoped to benefit from what he saw as a new ''seriousness'' in Israeli attitudes towards talks.

Abbas will meet US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Ramallah next week as part of an intensified round of diplomacy ahead of a planned Middle East conference called by President George W Bush and expected to be held in about two months.

Israel kept up its raids on militant strongholds, killing at least five militants in a series of air strikes and ground raids in Gaza, and arresting a leader of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank town of Jenin, Palestinian medics and militants said.

One of those killed, Omar al-Khatib, a commander of Islamic Jihad, had survived an Israeli attack on Tuesday by jumping out of his car in Gaza City before a missile struck home.

Reuters>