Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat shared intelligence about Iraqi opposition groups with Saddam Hussein’s regime, a confidential document published by a London-based Arabic paper indicates.
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, an independent, nonprofit organization that translates and analyzes media of the Middle East, the coded telegram published in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat was sent March 3, 2000, from the Iraqi intelligence bureau in Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad’s General Intelligence Department. It was obtained by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
According to the telegram, MEMRI says, Arafat warned the Iraqi regime of attacks on the Iraqi city of Kirkuk planned by the Iraqi opposition.
The text of the memo said in part:
“Brother Abu ‘Ammar received a letter from his acquaintances that said that [Kurd leader] Jalal Talabani, together with the Kurdish Islamic Movement, Baqir Al-Hakim’s group, and a number of Iraqi officers who fled with direct Iranian support and incitement, are planning to attack Kirkuk. In advance of the attack, flyers were distributed, to prepare for the ‘No-rouz’ Intifada, in a arrangement similar to the one of 1991, so that it will be accompanied by disturbances and [resistance] operations in the center and the south [of Iraq].”
Al-Sharq Al-Awsat correspondent Shirzad Shaikhani, MEMRI says, said that the Iraqi intelligence bureau in Amman, from where the letter was sent, was the main headquarters for oversight of all branches of Iraqi intelligence in all the Iraqi embassies in the Arab countries. In the years following the 1991 Gulf War, the Amman bureau acted to assassinate and arrest many members of Iraqi opposition organizations located in Jordan.
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