Frantic shuttle diplomacy and phone calls from world leaders tried to persuade Yasser Arafat to end his resistance to a new cabinet line-up, with a deadline for his moderate prime minister-designate to have it accepted or quit only hours away. If new prime minister Mahmud Abbas, who stormed out of talks on Saturday accusing Arafat of blocking reforms, cannot name his ministerial team by midnight (2100 GMT), the veteran Palestinian leader will be able to ask another person to take on the task.

That would be a major blow to the international community and Palestinian reformists who have staked their hopes for a new, moderate leadership on Abbas, expecting him to take steps that would allow an international peace plan to go ahead.

But Arafat is seen by many to be in a key struggle to save his almost 50-year political career, fearing that if Abbas is granted full powers as premier then he himself will be relegated to a mere symbolic role.

A Palestinian official told AFP that a US State Department official had phoned Arafat during the night and warned him he would have to "bear responsibility for a failure" in the talks.

The head of Egyptian intelligence was due in Arafat's offices in Ramallah, where he has been kept a virtual prisoner by Israeli forces for 16 months, in a bid to resolve the crisis after Abbas said talks between him and Arafat had "broken down."

News of the visit was passed to Arafat by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak , who phoned the veteran Palestinian leader during a meeting of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) on Tuesday evening.

Omar Suleiman, a key figure in the inter-Palestinian factional talks which took place in Cairo at the start of this year, is to visit Arafat at around midday (0900 GMT).

Negotiations between Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, and Arafat stalled late Saturday over the latter's refusal to accept the nomination of Mohammed Dahlan, a former senior police official who fell out with Arafat, as security chief.

Dahlan is one of the few men believed to be willing and able to take on powerful armed groups which have turned the 30-month Palestinian uprising into a bloody low-level war.

Arafat was said to want to retain control of the key security forces for himself.

But he has also been alarmed by the sudden international acceptance of Abbas, an advocate of suspending anti-Israeli attacks, while Arafat has been diplomatically isolated for more than a year.

Palestinian parliamentarians called on both men to make one last effort to find a way out of the impasse, which is threatening efforts to reform Arafat's much-criticised administration and to implement a peace "roadmap" drafted by US, UN, EU and Russian diplomats to create a Palestinian state by 2005.

US President George W. Bush has said he will publish the plan once Abbas is established at the head of a new government, and Washington hinted that anything short of that could endanger its release.

"We are still continuing our efforts and will continue until the last moment," Palestinian officials close to the talks said.

International attempts to encourage a last-minute breakthrough continued late Tuesday with Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh both phoning Arafat.

Earlier British Prime Minister Tony Blair called him, as well as the foreign ministers of Greece, Spain and Japan, to press him to relent.

On the ground in Ramallah, Russia's Middle East envoy Andrei Vdovin engaged in an intense bout of shuttle diplomacy, meeting first with Arafat, then with Abbas, then with Arafat once again.

"The Palestinian government must be formed under Abu Mazen in order to push the situation forward," he told journalists following his first meeting with Arafat.

Washington also put its shoulder to the wheel, with Secretary of State Colin Powell backing Abbas and slamming Arafat, who Israel and the United States want dropped for allegedly abetting violence.

"He's still there and he is still not showing the kind of leadership that we need in a Palestinian leader," Powell said of Arafat.

"I think if Yasser Arafat does not allow Mr Abu Mazen to form the cabinet that Mr Abu Mazen says he needs to be the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority , an opportunity of enormous importance will be lost and Arafat will have done it again," he said.

"The ones who will suffer the most: the Palestinian people as well as the innocent lives that might be lost as this crisis continues," Powell said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee, Mahmud Abbas. The US has urged Palestinians to move forward with political reforms even as hopes faded that Abbas would create a cabinet(AFP/File/Awad Awad)