Farouk Kaddoumi, a top Palestinian hardliner who rejected past peacemaking with Israel, on Thursday was named head of the mainstream Fatah movement to succeed Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian official said. He told Reuters that Kaddoumi, who had been Fatah's No. 2, was elevated by a vote of its policymaking Central Committee meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah hours after Arafat died in a French hospital. Kaddoumi rejected interim peace deals signed by Arafat with Israel in 1994 and as a result did not return with him to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, remaining in exile in Tunis and more recently in Damascus. It was not immediately known whether Kaddoumi, who co-founded Fatah with Arafat in 1965, might come back to the Palestinian territories as a result of becoming Fatah chief. Kaddoumi's rise could complicate a brewing post-Arafat power struggle since Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's moderate successor as head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, of which Fatah is part, supports renewed peace talks with Israel.