With Israeli troops battering at his gates, Yasser Arafat today spoke with foreign heads of state and media, Palestinian officials said.
A photograph put out by his press service showed him sitting at a table in a bare room, speaking into a telephone and gesticulating with his left hand. Within reach lie three other telephones and an Israeli-made Uzi machine-pistol, while an armed bodyguard stands beside him.
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A Palestinian gunman lies dying, moments after being shot by an Israeli sniper in Ramallah Photo: Reuters
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Other sources said he remained defiant, speaking again of his readiness to die as a martyr, but had also appealed for intervention by foreign leaders to bring an end to the Israeli assault.
Among those he had called, or had called him, included Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, the new chairman of the Arab summit, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and King Mohamed VI of Morocco.
Mr Arafat also spoke with the chairman of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Qatar's emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and its secretary general, Abdel Wahed Belkaziz, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and Arab League chief Amr Mussa.
Western leaders who received calls included Spanish President Jose Maria Aznar, whose country currently heads the European Union, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Middle East envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
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Arab media also interviewed the embattled Palestinian leader, among them the
Al-Jazeera
satellite news channel, Egyptian television and Lebanon's
Future TV
.
He told Al-Jazeera that "Israel wants me a prisoner or they want me killed", and Future TV that it wanted to take the Palestinian Authority hostage, without saying in exchange for whom or what.
"We are refusing to surrender", he added.
He repeated what he had said in other interviews, that he wanted to die as a "martyr," and that the Israeli attack on his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah was a response to the adoption yesterday by the Arab summit of a Saudi-sponsored peace initiative.
Mr Arafat said he had asked US peace envoy Anthony Zinni to inform Washington of the situation, and also been in touch with leaders of Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, a top aide to Mr Arafat, confirmed the Palestinian leader had spoken to Zinni, who a US official said wanted action to stop Palestinian violence.
Mr Lahoud said in a statement he had told Mr Arafat of his own efforts with world leaders and international organisations for "prompt action to halt the Israeli aggression."
He had "expressed the solidarity of Arab leaders and peoples and their strong condemnation of the arrogant and barbaric Israeli aggression," the statement added.
Egyptian television said Mr Mubarak and Mr Arafat had conferred on "the dangerous situation of the Palestinian Authority, and contacts taken by President Mubarak on the international level to contain the situation."
Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said that Mr Arafat had also urged Qatar's emir to "intervene urgently" in his capacity as chairman of the 57-member OIC.
AFP