Abbas OKs exhumation of Arafat

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has given final approval for digging up Yasser Arafat's remains and is pressing for an international investigation of his predecessor's mysterious 2004 death, a top aide said yesterday.

The decision came days after a Swiss lab detected elevated traces of a lethal radioactive agent on clothing said to be Arafat's.

Testing Arafat's bones could offer the last chance to get to the bottom of Palestinian claims that their leader was poisoned, though some experts cautioned it may already be too late for conclusive answers.

Several Palestinian officials have charged that Israel poisoned Arafat. The French doctors who treated him in his final days did not present a clear cause of death, while Israel emphatically denied it killed him.

Arafat, who died at age 75, is buried in a mausoleum in the walled government compound in the West Bank where he spent the last three years of his life under Israeli siege.

Scenes of heavy machinery tearing into the wreath-covered grave of the revered leader could prove offensive to devout Muslims. Also, the grave has become a must-see site for Palestinian and foreign visitors to Ramallah.

Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said Monday that the need to know overrides cultural sensibilities. "We are seeking the truth, and every single Palestinian is seeking the truth, and we cannot reach the truth without it [exhuming the remains]," Erekat told The Associated Press.

"In my heart, I have always said President Arafat was assassinated, was killed," he said. "Do I have evidence? I don't. . . . This is why we want the Swiss experts to come and exhume the body. This is why we should do everything humanly possible to get to the truth." -- AP