Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, locked in a power struggle with Yasser Arafat, will inform Parliament on Thursday that he will quit unless he wins authority to take key peace steps, a Palestinian minister said. ‘‘Abbas will ask for support for his policies or he will quit,’’ Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr said on Wednesday in the West Bank city of Ramallah. ‘‘Abbas will reiterate that the Cabinet must be fully empowered, as the basic law states, especially in the security and administrative fields,’’ he said. ‘‘He will clearly ask for backing of his policies based on the principle of one authority, respect for the rule of law, and rejection of illegal weapons,’’ Amr said. The moderate premier will address Parliament on Thursday to report on his performance four months after Palestinian President Arafat appointed him under international pressure for an end to almost three years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Disputes with Arafat have bogged down Abbas’s campaign for reforms, including a crackdown on militant factions, crucial to a US-backed roadmap plan for peace with Israel. Arafat has denied Israeli and US accusations of fomenting militant violence and obstructing the peace plan, but has refused to cede control to Abbas of Palestinian security forces seen as indispensable to reining in militants. Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat accused Israel of killing a US-backed peace plan with its ‘‘military aggression’’, CNN’s website quoted the Palestinian President on Wednesday as saying. ‘‘The roadmap is dead, but only because of Israeli military aggression in recent weeks,’’ Arafat told the US Network in the off-camera interview. He also accused US administration of not doing enough to keep the peace plan alive because of its preoccupation with rebuilding Iraq and next year’s presidential election, according to CNN.
