CAIRO, Nov 15 (AFP) - The Arab world is abuzz with suspicions that Yasser Arafat was poisoned, a theory fuelled by the lack of an official report on the cause of death of the veteran Palestinian leader despite a host of denials.
Palestinians have been demanding answers since Arafat died in a French hospital last Thursday after being airlifted from his Ramallah headquarters on October 29 suffering from what was described as a blood disorder.
The possibility of poisoning has been the talk of the Arab street, which loves a good conspiracy theory and sees Arafat as the latest in a line of Arab leaders whose death remains a mystery.
Most point the finger at Israel, whose Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had repeatedly threatened to kill his longtime archfoe.
A straw poll conducted by the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television station found that four out of five respondents thought he had been poisoned by Israel, a hypothesis raised by a number of Palestinian officials.
"It's poison to me," said Faruq Qaddumi, the Tunis-based Palestine Liberation Organisation official who replaced Arafat at the head of the main Fatah faction after his death.
Palestinian prime minster Ahmed Qorei on Monday asked France to provide him with a medical report detailing the cause of Arafat's death after the Palestinian leader's personal physician called for an investigation.
"I demand an official inquiry and an autopsy... so the Palestinian people can learn in all transparency what caused the death," Ashraf al-Kurdi said.
He said his suspicions were aroused by the absence of any information about Arafat's health after he was admitted to hospital given that he had been conscious when he left his Ramallah compound.
While officials in Paris have stressed that under French law the truth about Arafat's illness and death remains a medical secret, Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said Sunday there was no reason to suspect poisoning.
"Medically, scientifically, technologically, everything was done in medical terms and by way of treatment, and nothing leads us to suppose there was poisoning," Douste-Blazy said.
Egypt's semi-official Al-Ahram newspaper produced some of the country's best poison experts who claimed there was "a new type of poison that leaves no trace and this may have been used.
"It's possible that the Palestinian leader took small doses over a long period of time that gradually changed the composition of his blood," the experts were quoted as saying.
A Palestinian writer, requesting anonymity, said: "Ariel Sharon promised to liquidate Yasser Arafat and he could have done so many years ago had it not been for (US President) George W. Bush's veto."
"But in recent weeks, it appeared he was no longer bound by his promises," said the writer.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, now Israel's most wanted Palestinian militant who was the target of an assassination bid by Israeli agents in Amman in September 1997, also pointed the finger at the Jewish state.
"I accuse Israel of having poisoned the blood of Abu Ammar," Meshaal told Arab television network Al-Jazeera last week, using Arafat's nom-de-guerre.
Arafat is not the first Arab leader to have died in mysterious circumstances.
Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's death in 1970, which followed intense mediation efforts between King Hussein of Jordan and the Palestinians in the aftermath of the Black September massacres, was blamed on poison.
Poison was again painted as the culprit in the death of Algerian revolutionary leader Houari Boumediene at the age of 52, who fell into a three-month coma in 1978 and never recovered.
11/15/2004 19:23 GMT - AFP