Blair calls for team to 'test' Arafat

TONY BLAIR last night proposed sending an international monitoring force to the West Bank to test Yassir Arafat’s claims that he is not secretly supporting the suicide bomb attacks on Israel.
After the murder on Tuesday of 15 people in a pool hall near Tel Aviv, the Prime Minister was last night arranging urgent talks with European Union leaders over ways of restoring order and security within areas run by the Palestinian Authority.

He wants to build on the success of the joint US-UK initiative that allowed Mr Arafat to emerge from his Ramallah headquarters last week while Palestinians wanted for terrorism were detained under the oversight of supervisory wardens or monitors.

He said yesterday that such arrangements — potentially involving hundreds of outside monitors — should be put in place “right across the Palestinian Authority”. He told the Commons that the immediate task was to put a “verifiable security apparatus” in place inside the Palestinian Authority and its territories.