Palestinians 'involved in smuggling': US

The US government has concluded that the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah faction of the PLO were involved in an abortive scheme to smuggle in 50 tons of weapons, a senior US official said.

The judgment was based on ‘‘compelling evidence’’ presented by Israeli intelligence, the official said.

Yasser Arafat heads the Authority and also the PLO’s Fatah faction. A senior Israeli security official said Arafat was deeply involved in the operation, and he made that case to the administration yesterday.

Based on the Israeli briefings, the administration of President George W Bush believes Mr Arafat may have been in a position to know about at least some aspects of the operation, the official said. He offered no evidence.

Israeli naval commandos seized the ship in the Red Sea last Thursday and confiscated 50 tons of rockets, C4 and TNT explosives, anti-tank weapons and other arms Israel said were supplied by Iran.

A senior Israeli security official said yesterday that members of Hezbollah, a guerrilla group that is fighting a low-level cross-border conflict with Israel from Lebanon, loaded the weapons, at Kish, an island off the Iranian coast, on December 11.

The official said two senior Palestinian officials involved in finance and naval activities played leading roles, along with a top Hezbollah official.

He said the plot was hatched last June and continued through a series of diplomatic efforts by the US to establish a lasting cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians.

Initially, the US State Department withheld a judgment on Israel’s allegations, then gradually credited some of the evidence. Yesterday’s presentation by Israeli intelligence officials to the administration produced the US judgment that members of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah were involved.

The impact on the administration’s uphill struggle to keep peace hopes alive could be severe. Another blow yesterday was the slaying of four Israeli soldiers by Palestinians.

The White House and State Department demanded that Mr Arafat make arrests and eradicate the Hamas terrorism group.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a telephone call to the Palestinian leader, refused to accept Mr Arafat’s disavowal of any knowledge of the weapons shipment.

He told Mr Arafat ‘‘that the indications of Palestinian involvement were deeply troubling to us and that that’s what we felt required a full explanation’’, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.

Senior Israeli intelligence officers provided details of the weapons-laden ship and its seizure to Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford Jr, who heads the department’s intelligence bureau, and to Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, who is in charge of the Near East bureau.

A group of Congress members, meanwhile, cancelled a planned meeting with Mr Arafat, saying Israeli officials had presented them with evidence that he was behind the smuggling attempt.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer called the attack on an Israeli army post near Gaza ‘‘particularly disturbing’’ and an open assault on Mr Arafat’s authority.

Mr Bush was especially concerned about the attack, claimed by the Islamic militant group Hamas, since it occurred as US officials sensed progress in their efforts to broker peace in the region, Mr Fleischer said.

‘‘It is particularly disturbing because it came at a time when the situation on the ground had been relatively quiet,’’ the White House official said. He called on Mr Arafat to round up suspected terrorists and dismantle their operations.