DAMASCUS, Syria (Reuters) - The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine concluded the work of its round outside Palestine last night in Damascus. The meeting agreed upon several preliminary resolutions and elected a number of new members of the new Central Committee.The PFLP is expected to accept the resignation of veteran leader George Habash at the end of a conference that opened last week, Palestinian sources said Monday.
The sources said the group's deputy leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, who was allowed to enter the Palestinian self-ruled areas last year, would be elected Habash's successor.
Maher al-Taher, Politburo member spokesman of the PFLP, said the conference would continue its deliberations by holding two separate sessions in the next few days in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where the PFLP has a strong presence.
"The resignation of the secretary-general could not be discussed before the election of new bodies for the PFLP. This election will take place at the end of the conference," Taher said without saying when the conference was due to close.
Habash, 73, has led the Marxist-Leninist group since he established it in 1968, drawing attention to the Palestinian cause with a series of spectacular plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s by the PFLP.
The physician turned guerrilla has been an implacable opponent of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.
Taher said the conference was expected to end with a call on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to end his talks with Israel and to launch new talks based on U.N. resolutions.
He said a document adopted in Damascus at the end of the first session affirmed that the Arab-Israeli dispute could not be solved unless Palestinians unified ranks to oppose the current U.S.-sponsored Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.
"The Palestinian-Israeli peace talks should be based on United Nations resolutions which affirm the Palestinian people's right for self-determination and not the Oslo accords which deprive Palestinians even of their basic rights," he said.
The PFLP belongs to an eight-member Damascus-based alliance that opposed the interim Palestinian-Israeli peace deal signed in Washington in 1993 after secret talks in Oslo, Norway.
But the PFLP opened a reconciliation dialogue with Arafat last year to end a six-year boycott that followed the signing of the peace deal with Israel.