PARIS, Aug 29: President George W. Bush has just informed the Elysee Palace that he will be meeting officially with President Jacques Chirac on Sept 22 in New York during the General Assembly session of the United Nations.

A meeting of “more than an hour” has already been scheduled, although it is possible that Mr Chirac might also be able to meet with Mr Bush during the same trip at the White House or at Camp David.

On top of the agenda for the mini-summit will be the future of Yasser Arafat, as Mr Bush is known to desire to find a way to make use of France’s, and notably President Chirac’s influence, on the Palestinian Authority president to encourage him to resign.

Mr Bush is understood to want to bring about Yasser Arafat’s “abdication,” the word currently being used, to make way for a new generation of Palestinian leaders, a change that would also result in the departure of Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and the arrival of such personalities acceptable to Mr Arafat as Djibril Rajoub, recently appointed by the Palestinian president as the new “chief of national security” of the PLO.

A second subject of discussion will concern the future of US troops in Iraq.

Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin who will accompany Mr Chirac to New York, is at the centre of a third issue that Mr Bush wants urgently to discuss with the French head of state, an important restructuring of the United Nations, making it more acceptable to Washington.