Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to travel to Jordan next week, a senior aide said on Thursday, two days after Jordanian King Abdullah II offered to hold a meeting between Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haneya.

Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said the date of the meeting is not yet set due to the Christmas, but confirmed it will be next week.

The Palestinian president and the King of Jordan will meet over "the developments on the relationship between the government and the presidency establishment," Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio.

On Tuesday, Abdullah offered to host a meeting between Abbas and Haneya aimed at defusing escalating tensions between the rival Fatah and Hamas movements.

The Jordanian King also invited Haneya to Jordan but it is not clear if Haneya is going to comply with the invitation, the first positive Jordanian move towards Hamas since the governing party took office in March.

The power struggle between Abbas' Fatah movement and the governing the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has developed into fierce ground confrontations that claimed the lives of almost a dozen Palestinians over the past week.

The violence came after Abbas called for early presidential and parliamentary polls on Dec. 16, a move condemned by Hamas as a coup.

But Abbas underlined that his call was the last resort after Hamas and Fatah, the mainstream factions, failed to form a national unity government capable of lifting international siege imposed on the Hamas administration.

"The call for early elections was only meant to end the people's crisis," Erekat said.

Source: Xinhua