An aide to the late Palestinian President says the former French President Jacques Chirac knows the circumstances of Arafat's death.

Bassam Abu Sharief, Arafat's media advisor, said on Saturday that "Chirac has deliberately kept the information secret" claiming that it was in the interests of the Palestinian population.

Death of the 75-year-old Palestinian leader and the refusal of his wife and authorities at the French military hospital to release his medical records as well as Israel's threat to "remove" him prior to his death have caused many Palestinian officials to believe that he was poisoned by Israel.

During a press conference in Ramallah, Abu Sharif renewed his accusations against Israel and said that they poisoned the former Palestinian leader. He added that the method of assassinating Arafat was the same as the one used to kill former Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader, Wadie Haddad, in East Germany in 1978.

According to a recent publication Haddad was poisoned by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad who sent him biologically-infected chocolate which killed him within a month.

Abu Sharif said that the poison used in both cases prevent the body from producing red blood cells and that the effects of the poison does not appear for a long period after the death, making the assassination difficult to reveal and the crime harder to detect.