The United States said Friday that Israel should leave Yasser Arafat alone and not act to kill or expel him, following veiled threats against the Palestinian leader by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"Our position on such questions - the exile or assassination of Yasser Arafat - is very well known," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said. "We're opposed and we've made that very clear to the government of Israel."
"There is no question that the government of Israel knows our view on this matter," he told reporters after meeting Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Sabah at the State Department.
Armitage could not say whether Washington had reminded Israel of the US position since Sharon made the threat in interviews published Friday ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover. In those interviews, Sharon said he did not rule out assassinating Arafat.
He was asked by the Israeli daily Haaretz whether Arafat and the head of the Lebanese fundamentalist militia Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, might be on Israel's list of leaders to assassinate.
"I wouldn't suggest either of them feels immune ... Anyone who kills a Jew or harms an Israeli citizen, or sends people to kill Jews, is a marked man, period," Sharon said, in one of his most threatening remarks to date.
The thinly veiled warning followed the March 22 assassination he ordered of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a helicopter raid on Gaza City, Israel's highest-profile targeted killing since the start of the uprising.
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