Report reveals reasons behind Arafat's death

Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida on Tuesday published a report that detailed the causes of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's death. The Palestinian Medical Committee based its conclusions on a French report which affirmed that the Palestinian leader was poisoned. However, neither laboratory tests nor the French police could determine the type of poison used. The report was reviewed during the Yasser Arafat Foundation Board of Directors' meeting, chaired by the former Arab League Secretary-General, Amr Moussa, in the presence of the current secretary-general Nabil Al-Arabi as a founding member of the board of trustees. The report states that Arafat's health deteriorated after having dinner with his aides and guards in the leadership headquarters in Ramallah. Soon after, he suffered severe pains in the stomach. Although the report was restricted to laboratory tests, the meeting attended by a number of senior Arab and Palestinian leaders revealed that France had concealed some of the results carried out in military hospital laboratories in Paris. Some have said the move was due to pressure from Israel. Nonetheless, the Palestinian Medical Committee is to make a formal declaration of the report's findings, without accusing France of concealing information in order to preserve Palestinian-French relations.