Ramallah - Specialized committees representing feuding Palestinian factions have been invited to Cairo this week to draft an agreement ending the two-year schism between the two, a Palestinian official said Saturday.

The work will build on previous rounds of discussions between Fatah, which heads a government in the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Egypt has brokered a series of such talks in recent months to overcome the split, which erupted in 2007 after Hamas forces ejected Fatah from Gaza.

The committees will be invited separately "to start formatting a final version of what was agreed upon in the previous rounds of the Cairo-hosted dialogue," said Ahmed Qurei, the head of president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah delegation to the dialogue.

Each committee is responsible to settle one of five issues: forming a unity government; reforming the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO); holding elections; reforming security services; and achieving a national reconciliation.

Under the plan, the committees would deliver their conclusions to Egyptian mediators and then, on June 5, the leaders of the two groups would travel to Cairo "to ratify the final wording of the agreement."

In previous rounds, the two sides agreed to elections in January 2010, but failed to work out an electoral law or reach agreement on forming a unity government.

The national dialogue was sought to restore political unity to the Palestinian territories and to overcome the aftermath of Hamas' 2007 takeover of the Gaza Strip.(dpa)