Ramallah - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has sacked Palestinian Intelligence Chief Tawfiq Tirawi, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported Wednesday.

Abbas issued a presidential decree, ending Tirawi's tenure as head of the Palestinian General Intelligence and appointing him a security advisor to the president instead, Wafa said.

He informed the general of the decree Tuesday night.

Tirawi had been due to retire as intelligence chief last year when he turned 60, the age at which non-elected officials must retire under Palestinian law.

But Abbas extended his tenure by one year amid the emergency situation that had arisen from the June 2007 take-over of the Gaza Strip by the militant Hamas movement.

Tirawi is a member of Abbas' rival Fatah movement. The two Palestinian groups have been entangled in a bitter power struggle since the radical Islamic Hamas unexpectedly beat the secular Fatah in January 2006 parliamentary elections.

The power struggle culminated in Hamas violently taking over the Gaza Strip by overpowering the headquarters of Fatah-dominated security forces answering to Abbas in the summer of last year.

The two rival groups are to start Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks in Cairo early next month, for the first time since the Gaza-West Bank split.

Analysts said the timing of Tirawi's dismissal is linked to the talks, although Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum denied this.

Hamas is demanding a thorough reform of the Palestinian security forces as part of any reconciliation deal. Tirawi, as chief of the General Intelligence, was behind the arrests of Hamas members in the West Bank and as such disliked by the movement's supporters. (dpa)