Was the PLO leader poisoned?

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday cleared the way for an exhumation of the body of his predecessor Yasser Arafat, amid fresh suspicions surrounding the cause of his death in 2004.

"The Palestinian Authority was and remains fully prepared to cooperate and to provide all the facilities needed to reveal the real causes that led to the death of the late president," a statement from the office of Mahmoud Abbas read. "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."

Arafat's widow, Suha, who had rejected an autopsy when Arafat died at age 75 in 2004 at a French military hospital, announced she wanted one in the wake of a Swiss lab's findings, first reported by Al-Jazeera.

Francois Bochud, who heads the Institute of Radiation Physics in Lausanne, Switzerland, told the AP news agency on Wednesday that his lab examined belongings that Suha said were used by Arafat in his final days. Experts found what the scientist characterized as "very small" quantities of polonium, an isotope naturally present in the environment.

The scientist said an "elevated" level of more than 100 millibecquerel, a measurement of radioactivity, was found on belongings used by Arafat, compared with levels of some 10 millibecquerel in the reference samples.

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

Arafat had suffered intestinal inflammation, jaundice and a blood condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC, according to French medical records. But the records were inconclusive about what brought about DIC, which has numerous causes, including infections, colitis and liver disease.

The uncertainty prompted many to allege Arafat was killed by Israel, which viewed him as an obstacle to a peace treaty. Israeli officials have vociferously denied any foul play.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor was dismissive of the latest developments, saying, "The circumstances of Arafat's death are not a mystery ... He was treated in France, in a French hospital by French doctors, and they have all the medical information."

Arafat was the first president of the Palestinian Authority, holding the position from January 1996 until his death.

mkg/msh (AP, AFP, Reuters)