Palestinian chairman warns bin Laden

London (Agence France-Presse): Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in an interview published in The Sunday Times, urged al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to stop exploiting the Palestinian cause to gain support in the Islamic world. " I'm telling him directly not to hide behind the Palestinian cause," Arafat was reported as saying.

The paper said that Arafat was furious that the al-Qaeda terrorist network had sought to use the Palestinian struggle for an independent state to justify attacks such as the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa last month.

"Why is bin Laden talking about Palestine now?" Arafat said. "He has never helped us."

The paper said that Arafat had made his first forthright attack on bin Laden in response to a website set up by a hitherto unknown group, the Islamic al-Qaeda Organization, which says it is fighting for "the full liberation of the Palestinian land."

Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon charged that al-Qaeda militants were operating in Gaza. Arafat said that although there was some sympathy for bin Laden among young people in the Palestinian territories, it was insignificant.

"These kids don't really know who bin Laden is," he said.

The al-Qaeda network threatened more attacks on Israeli and U.S. targets after claiming of responsibility for last month's attacks in Kenya which killed 13 people.

"The two Mombasa attacks are the work of al-Qaeda," the group's spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith said in a voice recording posted on the jehadonline.org Islamist web-site earlier this month.