Arafat buried in chaotic scenes in West Bank

8.20am

RAMALLAH - Yasser Arafat was today buried in chaotic scenes of grief and gunfire at the compound where he spent his final years encircled by the Israeli army and powerless to realise his dream of a Palestinian state.

It was the end of an era for Israelis and Palestinians locked for decades in a conflict of which Arafat was one of the most recognised symbols, and stirred hopes for reviving Middle East peacemaking for the first time in years.

Offering condolences to the Palestinians, US President George W Bush said he saw a "great chance" for work toward lasting peace and creation of a Palestinian state. Bush had in the past shunned Arafat, branding him an "obstacle to peace".

However, fears remained of an internal power struggle that could thrust Palestinian territories into chaos and block diplomacy.

Amid scenes of frenzied mourning, soil brought from the site of Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque - Islam's third holiest site - was poured over Arafat's casket. A Palestinian flag and a black and white headdress, his trademark, were placed on the tomb of black and white marble.

"With our blood and soul we redeem you, Abu Ammar," the crowd chanted, using the nom de guerre of their leader, who fought for decades for a state he never achieved.

With Arafat's death, Palestinians lost a paternal leader whose autocratic rule and corruption-ridden administration never diminished their admiration for his struggle for independence.

Israel put its security forces on high alert over fears that Palestinian militants, whom it says Arafat never tried to restrain, would try to steal centre stage. Militants in Arafat's own Fatah movement vowed further anti-Israel attacks.

An Egyptian helicopter flew Arafat's coffin from Egypt, where a funeral service was held, to his Muqata headquarters in Ramallah. The aircraft was quickly engulfed by a surging crowd of thousands chanting Arafat's name.

Firing into the air, Palestinian security men struggled to remove the coffin from the aircraft and then held on to it tight as they placed it on a vehicle that plied its way through a dense throng of weeping mourners.

Nine Palestinians were wounded by shots fired by the security forces or gunmen. Medics said hundreds were treated after fainting or for minor injuries during the crush.

Arafat's body had been due to lie in state, but an official official said it was taken directly to the tree-shaded tomb instead because the crowd's emotions were running so high.

Arafat, a former guerrilla who became a Third World liberation icon and won a Nobel Peace Prize only to sink into renewed conflict with Israel, died at the age of 75 in a French hospital on Thursday of an undetermined illness.

Within hours of his burial, the new Palestinian leadership appeared to put out its first diplomatic feelers. "We want peace," Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat told Israeli television, appealing to the Jewish state to pull back troops from West Bank cities to allow elections for Arafat's successor.

Israel reoccupied much of the West Bank in 2002 after a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and has vowed to stay until Palestinians crack down on militants behind such attacks.

The chaotic scenes in Ramallah were in high contrast to a funeral earlier at a Cairo airbase, where the public was kept away and even some world leaders were shut out by mistake by over-zealous Egyptian guards.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, accompanied by leaders including Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, led the mourners in Cairo.

Arafat's widow Suha, who had lived apart from him for the last few years of his life, watched the procession from a black car which drove alongside. Accompanied by their 9-year-old daughter Zahwa, Suha wept at the airbase.

The United States sent a second-ranking State Department official, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, to the Cairo ceremony in a slight attesting to its boycott of Arafat.

Bush, however, appeared to take a more positive tone during a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Washington.

"I believe we've got a great chance to establish a Palestinian state and I'm prepared over the next four years to spend the capital of the United States to establish such a state," Bush said.

Israel dispatched no one at all to the ceremonies for Arafat. "I do not think we should send a representative to the funeral of somebody who killed thousands of our people," Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said.

Israeli television stations broadcast wall-to-wall coverage of Arafat's last rites in Cairo and Ramallah, but most Israelis were unmoved by the final chapter of a man they reviled as a "master terrorist".

Israeli forces surrounding Ramallah had effectively confined Arafat to the Muqata, battered by Israeli raids after suicide bombings in the Jewish state, for the past 2-1/2 years until he fell seriously ill two weeks ago and was airlifted to Paris.

Israel ruled out an Arafat grave in Arab East Jerusalem, calculating this would strengthen Palestinians' claim to a future capital in the part of the city that Israel captured in the 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally.

Palestinians have named a collective leadership comprised mainly of veteran moderates from Arafat's circle, reviving world hopes of a return to peacemaking.

However, his interim successors will be challenged by a popular younger militant generation fed up with old guard corruption and a mood of futility in dealings with Israel, raising concern of a power vacuum that could trump any diplomacy in the near term.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said it could be a "turning point" for peace if Arafat's successors ended violence. But Sharon also said he would pursue a unilateral plan to quit Gaza and keep much of the West Bank.

- REUTERS