Abbas rejigs Palestinian govt as emergency ends

By Mohammed Assadi

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejigged his government on Friday at the end of a month-long state of emergency declared when Hamas Islamists seized control of the Gaza Strip.

Responding to a constitutional limit on any state of emergency of 30 days that ended at midnight (2100 GMT), Abbas swore in three new ministers and reappointed Salam Fayyad as prime minister after he formally stepped down, aides said.

That put the government formed after Abbas dismissed its Hamas-led predecessor on June 14 on a new legal footing, although some lawyers argue Abbas's actions need approval from the legislature, which is paralysed by the crisis.

The appointment of new ministers by the Western-backed president, and the resignation and reappointment of the cabinet, effectively creates a new caretaker government to replace the emergency one formed under Fayyad after Hamas fighters routed forces loyal to Abbas's secular Fatah faction in Gaza.

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said that, by law, Fayyad now has five weeks in which to form a permanent new government that would require ratification by parliament.

"Your current government continues to function as a caretaker government," WAFA quoted Abbas as telling Fayyad in a decree.

Leading lawyers who drafted the Palestinian Basic Law, an interim constitution, had argued that Abbas had the right to dismiss Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh as prime minister, but not to appoint an entire new cabinet without legislative approval -- nor the right to suspend parts of the constitution by decree.

"The president is very keen that all his steps should be legal. He and the prime minister want to expand the current government," an Abbas aide said in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Fatah remains dominant.