Radioactive agent found on Arafat clothing

The body of former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat may be exhumed after the discovery of traces of a radioactive agent on clothing he reportedly wore in his final days reignited a cauldron of conspiracy theories.

Mr Arafat's widow, who ordered the Swiss laboratory tests, called for her husband's body to be examined and his successor gave tentative approval for a post-mortem test.

But experts warned that even after the detection of polonium-210, getting answers on the cause of death would be difficult.

Mr Arafat was 75 when he died on November 11, 2004, in a French military hospital. He had been airlifted there weeks earlier with a mysterious illness, after being confined by Israel for three years to his West Bank headquarters.

At the time, French doctors said Mr Arafat died of a massive stroke. According to French medical records, he had suffered inflammation, jaundice and a blood condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC.

But the records were inconclusive about what brought about the DIC, which has numerous causes including infections, colitis and liver disease. Outside experts who reviewed the records for The Associated Press were also unable to pinpoint the underlying cause.

The uncertainty sparked speculation about the cause of death, including the possibility of Aids or poisoning. Many in the Arab world believe he was killed by Israel, which held him responsible for the bloody Palestinian uprising of the early 2000s.

Israeli officials have repeatedly denied foul play and dismissed the latest theories as nonsense.

But that debate was reignited after a Swiss lab said yesterday it had discovered traces of polonium-210 in clothing and other belongings provided by Mr Arafat's wife Suha. She told the lab that Mr Arafat had used the items in his final days.

The development was first reported by the Al-Jazeera satellite channel.

In an interview in Doha, Qatar, Mrs Arafat said she was pleased to be getting closer to determining the cause of her husband's death.

"I was shocked first, of course, because it's a very dangerous poison that … they discovered," she told APTN. "But I was relieved that we are on the steps of knowing the truth."

She strongly hinted that she thinks Israel, which is widely believed to have a nuclear weapons programme, was responsible, but stopped short of openly saying so.

"Not the whole world has access to nuclear elements. We have to make a more profound and deep investigation to know all the truth about his death," she said.

Polonium-210 is best known for causing the death of Alexander Litvinenko, a one-time KGB agent turned critic of the Russian government, in London in 2006. Mr Litvinenko drank tea laced with the substance.

Francois Bochud, who heads the Institute of Radiation Physics in Lausanne, Switzerland, said his lab had discovered "very small" quantities of polonium-210, which is naturally present in the environment. But levels found in blood and urine samples taken from the clothing were well above normal.

Mr Bochud said an "elevated" level of more than 100 millibecquerel, a measurement of radioactivity, was found on Mr Arafat's belongings. That is compared with levels of about 10 millibecquerel in some control samples.

He said Mr Arafat's wife told him she had stored the items in her lawyer's office after her husband died. It was not clear why she waited so long to test them.

Mr Bochud stressed that the discovery did not provide proof that Mr Arafat had been poisoned. That would require further testing.

"What is possible to say is that we have an unexplained level of polonium, so this clearly goes towards the hypothesis of a poisoning, but our results are clearly not a proof of any poisoning," he said.

In the West Bank, Mr Arafat's successor, President Mahmoud Abbas, cleared the way for a post-mortem examination.

"The Palestinian Authority was and remains fully prepared to co-operate and to provide all the facilities needed to reveal the real causes that led to the death of the late president," Mr Abbas' office said.

"There are no religious or political reasons that preclude research on this issue, including an examination of the remains of the late president by a reliable national medical body, upon request and approval by his family."

The top cleric in the Palestinian territories, Mufti Mohammed Hussein, also gave the green light to help allay possible objections in the conservative Muslim society.

With Mrs Arafat and religious authorities in agreement, it was unclear what other steps were needed for the body to be exhumed from his mausoleum-style burial site in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

Palestinian officials have long argued that Israel had the means and motive to kill Mr Arafat and while confining him to his West Bank headquarters, Israel tightly controlled everything going in and out of the compound.

Palestinian official Saeb Erekat called for an international investigation into Mr Arafat's death.

In Israel, officials dismissed the renewed speculation.

"Making up conspiracy theories based on pretend evidence is so ludicrous that it befits the comedy channel and not a news channel," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.

"If there is anything suspicious about his death, then the French doctors would have known and said something."