A Fatah official on Thursday warned that the future of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas' faction was threatened due to "party differences."

Ghassan al-Massri, the West Bank-based official, said the failure of the movement to hold its sixth general conference since twenty years "will increase the negative gravitation which push towards losing the movement's customs and legacy and harm the movement's future."

The members of Fatah central committee shared conflicting opinions regarding the holding of the party's sixth congress. Some of the members supported holding the conference as soon as possible, others opposed and a third trend called for excluding the corrupt elements from participating in the meetings.

Fatah should not be overloaded "with differences that may lead to a state of conflict and fighting among its people," al-Massri said, accusing some of the Fatah leaders of "trying to impose the personal interests instead of the general one."

Egypt and Jordan refused requests from Fatah to hold its conference on their territories while Islamic Hamas movement, Fatah's bitter rival, called on Abbas' movement to hold the conference in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Hamas defeated the long-dominant Fatah in parliamentary elections in 2006 and ousted it from Gaza a year later in deadly fighting.

(Xinhua News Agency May 8, 2009)