The United States has pledged to work with Yasser Arafat's successors to revive Middle East peace talks, but questions remain about whether the new Palestinian leadership is up to the task in US eyes. Whether it be a matter of style or ideology, officials such as Mahmud Abbas, the new head of Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation, have yet to show Washington they can curb anti-Israeli attacks and deal for peace, analysts said.
"None of us knows what they are really bringing to the table because we don't know how much control they will have over the security services," said Anthony Cordesman, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
"We don't know how the hard-liners are going to weigh in once the funeral is over. We don't know what the younger, more radical elements will do or how they are going to interface with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad."
The administration of President George W. Bush, which branded Arafat a terrorist sponsor and shunned him for four years, made it clear it would work only with Palestinian leaders who could rein in the militants.
Abbas, 69, a polished, moderate PLO veteran who served four rocky months last year as Arafat's prime minister before quitting in frustration, was once a Washington favourite.
He attended the June 2003 summit in Aqaba, Jordan that launched the US-sponsored "road map" for peace and was invited to the White House for talks with Bush the following month.
But Abbas, better known by his nom-de-guerre Abu Mazen, made little headway towards a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has now claimed more than 4,500 lives since 2000.
His failure to win concessions from Israel on the release of prisoners and other issues wrecked his credibility with the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon derided him as a "chicken without feathers."
Regional expert Jon Alterman wondered whether Abbas had the charisma and leadership skills to rally the Palestinian people behind a new push for peace after Arafat's departure.
"Abu Mazen has often been the backroom guy," said Alterman, director of CSIS's Middle East program. "He has not been a person who has engendered a lot of public support on the Palestinian street."
Prospects were not brighter elsewhere.
Ahmed Qorei, 67, prime minister for a year, had some bruising power struggles with Arafat over control of their security services but has not been taken too seriously by Israel or the United States.
Sharon considers him too weak to crack down on the militants and refuses to see him. Qorei met overseas with Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice but has not been to the White House.
Parliamentary speaker Rawhi Fattuh, 55, who took over as acting head of the Palestinian Authority for 60 days pending elections, was seen as a marginal figure with no real clout in the post-Arafat era.
Analysts here speculated that the militants could use the vacuum left by Arafat to boost their influence in the Palestinian movement, further complicating efforts to get back to the negotiating table with Israel.
One worrying sign, they said, was the surprise designation of hard-liner Faruq Qaddumi, the PLO's Tunis-based politburo chef, as head of the organisation's dominant Fatah faction.
Waiting in the wings, meanwhile, was a new generation of strong-willed Palestinian leaders including former security chief Mohammed Dahlan and the fiery Marwan Barghuti, serving a life sentence in an Israeli jail. Jean-Robert Leguey-Feilleux, a veteran Middle East watcher with Saint Louis University, said the jockeying for power among the Palestinians was probably just starting.
The Bush administration, meanwhile, was likely to come under increasing pressure to throw its weight back into peace effort now that Arafat, branded here the major obstacle, was no longer on the scene.
The New York Times said Friday the United States could not keep "tap dancing, spouting the same tired excuses that America can't do anything to restart the road map to peace until Palestinian extremists end their violence against Israel, and Palestine has a leader America can trust."
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