Arafat to blame 'for murder'

2004-04-05 09:50

Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in a new threat against Yasser Arafat, said the Palestinian leader was to blame for "the murder of Jews for decades", in an interview broadcast by public radio on Monday.

Sharon, whose army last month assassinated the founder of the radical Palestinian group Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said earlier in the interview that "all those who kill Jews or push for the killing of Jews or Israeli citizens deserve to die".

The prime minister had upped the ante against his old nemesis on Friday in another series of interviews with the Israeli media.

Sharon was asked by the Israeli daily, Haaretz, whether Arafat and the head of the Lebanese fundamentalist militia Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, might also be on Israel's hit list.

Immune

"I wouldn't suggest either of them feels immune ... Anyone who kills a Jew or harms an Israeli citizen, or sends people to kill Jews, is a marked man, period," he said.

His comments on Friday had drawn international calls for restraint and condemnation of Israel's policy of "targeted killings", including from his top US ally.

"Our position on such questions - the exile or assassination of Yasser Arafat - is very well known," US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, said.

"We're opposed and we've made that very clear to the government of Israel."

In his public radio interview, the prime minister rejected US criticism of his threat against Arafat. "Every country which respects itself, faced with assassins, must defend itself, like the United States does," he said.

In another interview he gave to army radio ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover, he stressed that Israel "needs no authorisation from anybody to defend ourselves".

The ageing Palestinian leader is authorised to leave the city and even the occupied territories, but Israel says there is no guarantee he will be allowed to return.

The Israeli security cabinet approved in principle in September to "remove" Arafat from his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah, where he has been confined since December 2001.

- AFP