SUHA ARAFAT TAKES CHARGE

Who will get Arafat's millions? Wife is fighting Palestinian officials for assets, Arab TV reports
Ramallah, West Bank -- The wife of Yasser Arafat was locked in a bitter dispute with Palestinian officials over the fate of his vast secret fortune as the Palestinian leader lay apparently near death in a French hospital, according to a report on the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera.

Arafat's secret assets have been estimated at anywhere between $200 million (Forbes magazine) and $6 billion (U.S. and Israeli intelligence). Forbes listed him ninth in its ranking of the world's wealthiest heads of state -- even though he is a ruler without a country and many of his people are refugees.

In Paris, the struggle over Arafat's hidden millions threatened to overshadow his final days. His wife, Suha Arafat, hopes to inherit at least part of his fortune. But, according to Al-Jazeera, Palestinian leaders demand that it be handed over to the Palestinian people.

The assets are managed in a complex network of bank accounts, holding companies and stocks whose details are known only to his closest confidant, financial adviser Mohammed Rashid.

Suha Arafat has access to some of the money, but apparently even she does not know all the ins and outs of the secret accounts. Al-Jazeera reported that she asked Rashid to make out a list of Arafat's assets and that he refused, saying he would report only to the Palestinian Authority.

According to Al-Jazeera, Arafat had written a will leaving at least some of his fortune to his wife and their 9-year-old daughter Zahwa, but other reports said Arafat has no will, leaving most of his fortune in the hands of Rashid.

When the 75-year-old Palestinian leader was flown to a military hospital outside Paris on Oct. 29, Suha Arafat took control of his medical care, although the couple have lived apart for nearly four years.

Thirty years younger than Arafat, the Christian, Sorbonne-educated Suha Tawil married the Palestinian leader in a secret ceremony in 1992 in Tunisia, where she worked for the Palestine Liberation Organization. After Arafat's return to the Palestinian territories in 1994, she played the part of Palestinian first lady, but spent most of her time in Paris. She left the family's home in Gaza in January 2001 and took Zahwa to Paris, where they have lived ever since at the five-star Bristol Hotel.

French officials earlier this year began investigating the transfer of $11.5 million from Swiss bank accounts to accounts in France controlled by Suha Arafat.

"What is so strange for the Palestinian president to send any amount of money to his family and his wife, who is protecting the Palestinian interests abroad, and the money came and will come legally?" she told an interviewer from Al-Hayat, an Arab-language newspaper published in London.

With Arafat apparently near death, questions linger about what has happened to the billions in aid money from the international community to build the nascent Palestinian state. Many suspect that Suha Arafat's luxurious lifestyle -- as well as the cars, villas and expensive education of other prominent Palestinian families -- was bought with cash stolen from international donors and tax revenues.

In 1997, the Palestinian Authority's own officials found that $323 million -- more than a third of the total budget -- had gone missing. The International Monetary Fund said last year that $750 million had been "diverted" from the Palestinian budget up to the year 2000.

SUHA GOES FOR THE GOLD II
The entourage [of Palestinians in Paris] is divided into two camps. Suha and Kadoumi [original Fatah terror master] head one camp against Rashid and Abu Rudeina. The tension and rivalry between Suha and the leadership around Arafat have been going on for awhile. One of the reasons Abbas and other senior officials refused to accompany Arafat to Paris was their reluctance to meet Suha, who is taking advantage of the French law giving the wife the authority to decide who will stay beside the husband's bed.

The fights between Suha and the Palestinian senior officials focus, among other things, on financial matters. Suha got some of her cronies to get tenders and franchises in PLO and PA deals, against the will of Arafat's people. She accused them of corruption, while they accused her of using her status to advance her cronies' interests.

Some of these accusations led to legal suits abroad and were among the reasons for Suha's leaving the territories. Rashid mediated between Suha and PA officials and managed to reach financial compromise arrangements with her. In recent years, Suha claimed that she and her daughter Zauwa were not receiving enough money to live on. Arafat's confidants, however, leaked reports of huge sums of money that were transferred to her hands.