French probe seeks West Bank trip to exhume Arafat

French judges investigating suspicions that Yasser Arafat was poisoned are seeking to travel to the West Bank and have the Palestinian leader's body exhumed, his widow said in a statement Wednesday. If the trip receives the go-ahead then "French scientific police could very soon take samples" from the body to further their investigations, Suha Arafat said in a statement released by her lawyer. Suha Arafat called on the Arab League and the Palestinian Authority to suspend their own "initiatives" into her husband's death at a military hospital near Paris in 2004, to leave the way clear for the French probe. Last month, French prosecutors opened a murder enquiry into Arafat's death aged 75, following claims he may have died of radioactive polonium poisoning and the launching of legal action in France by Arafat's family. Suha Arafat said she was pleased that the three instructing magistrates had told her lawyer that they were making the necessary moves to gain access to the West Bank. No date was given for the trip. Allegations that the Nobel peace laureate was poisoned were resurrected after the 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. Arafat's widow said she was happy that three French magistrates had been tasked with conducting an inquiry and that she would do whatever she could to help them enter the West Bank. In July the Arab League gave its blessing to a proposal from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to open an international commission of enquiry into Arafat's mysterious death. The Lausanne University Hospital Centre, a Swiss radiology lab, said last month it had received the go-ahead from Arafat's widow to test his remains for poisoning by polonium. The Palestinian Authority has also approved such a probe. French doctors never offered an explanation for Arafat's death, and many Palestinians believe he was poisoned by Israel, which denies the allegations. Suha Arafat lodged a complaint for murder against persons unknown in France on July 31 over the radioactive poisoning claims. Yasser Arafat was sent to the Percy military hospital in Clamart outside Paris in 2004 after suffering from nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, acute diarrhea and an abnormally low amount of platelets in the blood. Doctors at the hospital conducted a wide range of tests but were unable to determine the exact cause of his illness. A few days after his arrival in France, Arafat lapsed into a coma and he died on November 11, 2004. No autopsy was conducted. French news website Slate.fr last week published a copy of the medical report into Arafat's death and said his symptoms were not consistent with polonium poisoning.