The Fatah chairman Faruq Qaddumi contends Yasser Arafat was poisoned.

The head of the Palestinian movement Fatah asserts that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was fatally poisoned by Israel.

"I can categorically confirm that Abu Ammar (Arafat) was poisoned," exiled Fatah chairman Faruq Qaddumi told reporters.

Arafat, for long the public face of the Palestinian struggle for statehood, was declared dead in a French military hospital on the outskirts of Paris on November 11 2004 where he had been treated for two weeks.

France's strict medical secrecy laws mean that the exact cause of Arafat's death has not been made public, but his nephew received a copy of his medical file.

Fuelled by the ambiguity surrounding his death, many ordinary Palestinians are convinced that Arafat's death at the age of 75 was far from natural.

Arafat’s personal physician of more than 20 years, Jordanian Ashraf Al-Kurdi "attests that Abu Ammar presented the symptoms of poisoning," added Qaddumi, who succeeded Arafat as head of the Fatah movement which the late leader had founded.

"The poisoned was administered in the food and in the medication he swallowed," said Qaddumi, who was appointed Fatah chief after Arafat’s death but refuses to visit the occupied Palestinian territories and lives in Tunis.

He further added that the Palestinian health minister Dhehni al-Wahidi, had visited Tunisia to meet with the doctors there who had examined Arafat prior to his transfer to Paris.

Those doctors had been rushed to Arafat's bedside as his health suddenly plunged in late October 2004, but have since kept their silence on their findings.

A special committee of doctors has been set up to study the details of Arafat’s medical records after they were handed over to the Palestinian Authority.     Aljazeera.com - 12 July 2005