June 25, 2002	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 13, 1423

PARIS, June 24: When he arrives on Tuesday at Palestinian Authority headquarters at Ramallah to meet Yasser Arafat, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is expected to have some bad news to deliver to the Palestinian president.

Villepin is expected, according to French foreign ministry (Quai d’Orsay) sources, to ask President Arafat, whom France has long and strongly supported, to step down from his post, making way for younger blood in the Palestinian leadership.

Among those being presently “looked over” by France, say the diplomatic sources, with a view to eventually replacing Arafat is Mohamed Dahlan, 41, a former head of the Palestinian “preventive security” forces in Gaza, who recently resigned after seven years in that position.

He is considered as a “possible” and “acceptable” successor to President Yasser Arafat, and this not only by France but by apparently the United States and the European Union.

The French diplomatic sources note that Dahlan “first attracted the attention of the West as an astute negotiator during the Oslo accords,” and that ever since, “he has never been lost sight of” by his “protectors” in the West.

It is also for that reason, say the diplomatic sources, that Dahlan was persuaded to refuse a position — apparently that of the Palestinian Authority’s new interior minister — in the new cabinet announced earlier this month by Arafat.