An aide to the late Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat said on Saturday that former French president Jacques Chirac knows the circumstances of Arafat's death.

"Chirac has deliberately kept his information secret in order to protect Palestinian interests," Bassam Abu Sharief, Arafat's media advisor, told a news conference in Ramallah.

The Palestinian leader died in a French hospital in 2004 after months of an undisclosed illness believed to be the result of poison.

Since 2002, Israel had forced Arafat to stay confined to his office in Ramallah.

Abu Sharief accused Israel of killing Arafat by a poison that stops the production of red blood cells. Arafat's three doctors also knew how Arafat died and the sort of poison used, he said.

He refused to give more details which he said "would be helpful to arrest the criminal in the future."

After winning the 2006 parliamentary elections, the Islamic Hamas movement has demanded the file of its rival Fatah chief's death be opened for investigation.