Fourteen new members have won seats at Fatah's central committee and four old members remained in their positions after being re-elected, the Palestinian television announced on Tuesday.

The results showed a balance between the "old guards" and the young leaders of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' movement that holds sway in the West Bank.

The new members included Mohammed Dahlan, former security chief in the Gaza Strip, who is considered as Hamas' most-critical foe.

The Islamic Hamas movement has been controlling Gaza since it routed pro-Abbas forces in June 2007.

Hamas has prevented the Gaza-based Fatah members from traveling to the West Bank to join the conference and also reportedly tried to block any attempt to elect Dahlan to the central committee as the young leader enjoys popularity among the Gazans.

"Now we have new tasks, the most important is to define the ties with Hamas," Dahlan told reporters in Bethlehem.

Meanwhile, Marwan al-Barghouthi, a West Bank-based Fatah leader who is serving an imprisonment sentence in an Israeli jail, and Saeb Erekat, a well-known peace negotiator, have also joined the highest leading body in Fatah.

The elections are the first in 20 years since Fatah held its fifth conference in Tunis in 1989. Last week, Fatah has successfully launched its sixth general convention for the first time on the Palestinian territories.

Over 2,000 Fatah members were tasked with electing 18 members for the central committee and 120 members for the revolutionary council, which is the group's parliament.

According to the congress leadership, 96 candidates had run for the central committee membership while 617 candidates had run for the revolutionary council. The results for a new revolutionary council are expected to come out later Tuesday.

(Xinhua News Agency August 11, 2009)