End of Arafat's mourning period marked

Mahmoud Abbas, who is expected to win the election on Jan. 9 to succeed Yasir Arafat as Palestinian president, praised his legacy on Tuesday as he marked the end of Mr. Arafat's 40-day mourning period.

Mr. Abbas, 69, who has already succeeded Mr. Arafat as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was lavish in his praise in a speech inside Mr. Arafat's old headquarters in Ramallah. "No words of homage are sufficient to commemorate his memory," Mr. Abbas said in the presence of Palestinian notables and Arab representatives, in a speech sometimes broken by bursts from guns fired in homage by the crowd outside. Mr. Arafat, he said, "remains eternal in the minds and collective memory of our people and the Arab and Islamic people."

One day, Mr. Abbas said, Mr. Arafat will be buried in Jerusalem, and he vowed, "We will continue the struggle to make your dream and our dream come true and to have a Palestinian child raise the Palestinian flag on the walls of Jerusalem, the capital of our independent Palestinian state."

The prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, vowed that the new leadership would follow in Mr. Arafat's steps, saying, "His principles are ours, and his goals are ours."

Source: Agencies (abridged by PD Online)