Abbas 'may fire Palestinian premier Fayyad'

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas may fire Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a Fatah member said, as the party criticised the premier's government as being "improvised and confused."

Abbas "is leaning towards dismissing Fayyad from the head of the government and forming a new one," a member of Fatah's Revolutionary Council told AFP late on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"I am angrier than all of you at the government... but I don't want to say more than that now. Just wait for three days," he quoted Abbas as saying at a meeting of the council in Ramallah.

He said the key factor was disagreement over the resignation of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority's finance minister, which Abbas refused to accept but which Fayyad, a US-educated economist, agreed to.

Nabil Qassis, a former president of the Bir Zeit University near Ramallah who joined the government in May 2012, announced on March 2 that he was resigning, without giving a reason. Abbas was abroad at the time.

"Abbas informed Fayyad that if Nabil Qassis did not return to the finance ministry, Abbas would dismiss his government and form a new one," the official said.

The Revolutionary Council -- one of the secular Fatah's governing bodies -- also officially criticised Fayyad's government for the first time on Friday.

"The policies of the current Palestinian government are improvised and confused in many issues of finance and the economy," it said in a statement.

Fayyad, 61, a political independent and former International Monetary Fund and World Bank official, was first appointed Palestinian prime minister amid the deadly takeover by the Islamist Hamas of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Hamas has never recognised his authority, continuing instead to recognise its own prime minister, Ismail Haniya.

Rumours have been rife in Ramallah that Fayyad is on the way out because of differences with the Fatah leadership.

The Palestinian Authority is facing chronic budget difficulties labelled by ministers as "the worst financial crisis" since its creation in 1994.

The Palestinian fiscal crisis is aggravated by non-payment of aid pledged by global donors, mainly the United States and Arab nations, and tensions with Israel.

Fayyad spent three days in hospital this week being treated for pancreatic inflammation. He was discharged late on Wednesday after undergoing treatment and returned home to rest, a medic close to the premier said.