Abbas Welcomes French Probe into Arafat Death

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday welcomed a decision by French prosecutors to open a murder inquiry into claims the late Yasser Arafat may have been poisoned.

The probe was announced on Tuesday, a month after his widow Suha and daughter Zawra launched legal action in France following reports that experts had found traces of the radioactive substance polonium on Arafat's clothes.

"President Mahmoud Abbas welcomes the French judicial system’s decision to launch an investigation into the death of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat," his office said.

Arafat died at age 75 at a military hospital near Paris on November 11, 2004 with medical experts unclear on the exact cause.

Abbas said that Tawfiq Tirawi, who heads the Palestinian committee for investigating the death, and Palestinian justice minister Ali Muhanna had separately both invited the Swiss Radiophysics Institute to come to the West Bank town of Ramallah "to examine Arafat's remains."

Last week, the Swiss lab said it had received the go-ahead from Arafat's widow to test his remains for polonium and would carry out a fact-finding mission in Ramallah to assess the viability of such a move.

It was not immediately clear when it would take place.

Abbas also expressed confidence that an international committee to probe Arafat's death would soon be formed.

Allegations that the Nobel Peace laureate was poisoned were resurrected last month after Al-Jazeera news channel broadcast an investigation in which Swiss experts said they found high levels of polonium on his personal effects.

Polonium is a highly toxic substance which is rarely found outside military and scientific circles, and was used to kill former Russian spy turned Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006 shortly after drinking tea laced with the poison.