A senior Palestinian official said on Tuesday that a new government will be sworn in in the day before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"The ministers will take the oath in front of Abbas today," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, Secretary General of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
The new government will not include members from Islamic Hamas movement which won the parliamentary elections in 2006 owing to a power-struggle with Abbas' Fatah movement.
According to a source in Ramallah, the new cabinet, which is to be headed by Salam Fayyad, will be made up of 24 ministers representing the PLO factions, independents and businessmen.
But the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) would be the only PLO faction not to join the government due to the lack of clear view over the credibility and legality of the government which is being formed away from the parliament.
Hamas has been ruling the Gaza Strip with its own government which was sacked by Abbas in June 2007 after his forces lost control of the coastal strip. Abbas then asked Fayyad to form a caretaker government in the West Bank.
Fatah and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) have said the new government will quit as soon as an agreement on a unity government is reached in the Egyptian-hosted talks between the Palestinian groups.
Meanwhile, Hamas said the installation of a new West Bank-based government was "an early death announcement of the national dialogue" which will resume in Cairo on Saturday.
"Such a decision show bad intentions and lack of willingness to reach an agreement, it boosts the state of schism,' said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum in a statement.
(Xinhua News Agency May 12, 2009)
