RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug 23 (AFP) - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is baulking at the implementation of promised reforms, suspicious of the motives of deputies who have threatened to suspend parliament as a mark of protest.
The 75-year-old made a rare admission of fallibility last Wednesday when he acknowledged that his Palestinian Authority had made "unacceptable mistakes" which he promised to redress, as well as scolding widespread corruption among officials.
But when a committee of MPs met him later at his battered West Bank headquarters in an attempt to transform his words into action, they emerged frustrated and empty-handed.
The response of some MPs was to push for a suspension of the Palestinian Legislative Council, a move which was only narrowly defeated in a vote.
"A week has passed and nothing has changed. There have been no new meetings between the committee and the president," Jamal Shati, a member of the parliamentary committee and of Arafat's Fatah movement, told AFP.
Arafat knows that he can ultimately rely on the support of MPs from his dominant Fatah faction to prevent the passage of measures that target him or threaten to topple prime minister Ahmed Qorei's government.
A meeting was due to take place between Arafat and the Fatah bloc on Monday evening to smooth differences ahead of a parliamentary session on Tuesday when the reform demands are due to come up for debate once more.
The MPs are in particular pushing for Arafat to agree in writing to probe corruption files that they submit and to lay down a clear division of powers between the myriad security services which Arafat was meant to have streamlined last month.
Denouncing the "prevarications" of the Palestinian leadership over the demands for reform, Shati said that "to postpone the crises rather than tackle them can only aggravate the situation."
Other deputies cast doubt on Arafat's willingness to implement reform and crack down on corruption.
"The president considers the propositions that we have submitted to him as diktats. He sees the situation as a battle for power designed to weaken him," said Azmi Shuaibi.
Another Fatah MP, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Arafat was dragging his heels.
"He does not want to sign anthing because he does not want officials under his authority to be worried about the fight against corruption," he told AFP.
"Nothing will change unless Fatah and the PLC adopt a strong position" in favour of reform, added the deputy.
Writing in the Ramallah-based Al-Ayyam newspaper on Monday, the columnist Ashraf Al-Ajrami said "it is the presidency in particular which is blocking the implementation of the recommendations and proposals" for reform.
He said that that Arafat "wasted an important opportunity to announce concrete reform measures by limiting himself to more general promises in his speech last week.
"It appears that reforms will not come about as a result of internal necessity but only when there is strong outside pressure. Now the drift created by the approach of the US presidential elections (in November) has indefinitely postponed the question of reforms."
Arafat has been facing the biggest challenge to his authority since his return from exile a decade ago with mass protests against corruption in parts of the territories and the security crisis which at one stage led Qorei to submit his resignation, a move he later retracted.