PARIS, Jan 17: As he often has done when his back is to the wall, Chairman Yasser Arafat has turned to the French, in this case to the pages of France’s leading daily Le Figaro to explain his predicament and make a call not only to France and his friend President Chirac, but also the European Union, to come to his assistance in a situation which he describes as increasingly precarious.

Already last summer, he’d notified Chirac about Israeli plans to assassinate him and leading officials of the Palestinian Authority, a plea that prompted the French head of state to bring up the matter with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — and issue him a stern warning about placing Arafat’s life in danger — when Sharon made an official visit to Paris later in the season.

It was not for anything that during the same visit Sharon let it be known that in his eyes French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who ostensibly has not always shared Chirac’s concern about Arafat’s safety, was described as a “friend of Israel,” while Chirac was characterized as “not an enemy,” an exercise in what the French refer to as nuance.

In the front-page interview in ‘Le Figaro’, Arafat remarked that in his estimation Israel “wants to kill all” of the leaders of the Palestinian people, according to “a systematic tactic which will see them fall one after the other.” In this context, notes Arafat, the last attack on Israeli targets by the Hamas, “has nothing surprising” about it as they were replying to the elimination of one of their leaders who’d just fled a Palestinian prison that had been bombed by the Israelis.

“Our problem with Sharon,” says Arafat, “is that in reality he doesn’t want an agreement. He prefers a conflict because in so doing he manages to bring everything to a halt.”

Arafat goes on to implore not only France but the European Union to come to his assistance, notably by relaunching negotiations and in doing so replacing the United States from which Arafat does not seem to expect much of anything in coming months.

The European Union, he notes, “are a great power, they have strong relations with the United States. They have an international audience that extends from one end of the globe to the other, from Japan to Chile. You have to understand that peace in the Middle East concerns much more than the Palestinians. Or Israel. It concerns all of the Middle East and all of the world. How can Europe and the Europeans continue to stand on the sidelines? In standing back, in doing nothing, it’s their reputation that’s at stake”.