Israel: Report on Arafat's death inconclusive

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Wednesday slammed an autopsy report by a board of Swiss scientists charging late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat might have been poisoned to death. Earlier on Wednesday, the Swiss scientists announced that according to initial examinations, the levels of Polonium in his bloodstream were 18 times more than the norm. This report was officially submitted to the Palestinian Authority a day earlier. Israel has been accused by Palestinian officials of being behind Arafat's death in November 2004 at a hospital in France. Doctors then ruled the cause of death to be a stroke. "The findings are inconclusive," Yigal Palmor, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said in a statement sent to Xinhua, adding that the report isn't supported by the facts. "We anticipate a wave of further accusations, but there's no proof," he added. According to him, "even if there were traces of Polonium left in his system which may indicate poisoning, there's no proof that Arafat has been indeed poisoned. There are many questions still left unanswered." He added that Israel is not involved in Arafat's death in any way and suggested to wait for the findings of an independent team of French scientists, also examining Arafat's death. Attempts to determine Arafat's cause of death began last November, with experts digging out his body, which was buried in Ramallah amid surfacing doubt over his cause of death. Suah Arafat, his widow, said on Wednesday that the results of the examinations handed to her "left no room for doubt," the report "prove that this is not a natural death but murder," she said. However, she didn't specify who stood behind it.