TUNIS, Tunisia, May 8 (UPI) -- The chief of the mainstream Fatah movement, Farouk Kaddoumi, Sunday rejected the Palestine Liberation Organization's choice of Mahmoud Abbas as president.
Kaddoumi, the head of the PLO's political department, said in a statement in Tunis the "absent executive committee of the PLO has no authority to appoint the president of the state of Palestine in exile, because that is the jurisdiction of the Palestine National Council," the Palestinian parliament-in-exile.
Officials said Sunday the PLO executive committee named Abbas, PLO chairman and president of the Palestinian Authority, as the president of the state of Palestine.
Many executive committee members still live in exile. Kaddoumi, who has lived in Tunis since 1982, opposed the 1993 Palestinian-Israeli interim Oslo accords.
