The Palestinian Authority is awaiting Israel's green light to bury Palestinian militant Abu Abbas in the West Bank after the United States agreed to release his body, an official said Saturday.
"The Americans have agreed to hand over his body but the Israelis have not yet given their permission for him to be buried here," a source in the office of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The Palestinian Authority wants to bury Abbas in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Abbas, whose real name was Mohammed Abbas, died last Monday in a US prison in Iraq.
An autopsy carried out by a US Navy pathologist confirmed the onetime leader of the radical Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF), died of a heart attack.
His widow and the Palestine Liberation Organisation had called for an independent investigation into his death.