Israeli TV terms Palestinian President Abbas as ex. KGB agent
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RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories (APP) - A spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Thursday dismissed a claim by researchers that he worked as a Soviet agent in Damascus in the 1980s, calling it a smear intended to derail a Russian peace initiative.
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The claim emerged in a report by Israeli public television on Wednesday night citing two researchers who were studying the so-called Mitrokhin papers stored in Britain at Cambridge University's Churchill Archives Centre.
"In 1983, he (Abbas) is listed as being groomed by the KGB under the codename Krotov, the mole," one of the Israeli researchers, Isabella Ginor, told the programme.
Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh told it "falls under the framework of Israeli absurdities which we have got used to," calling it a "smear campaign."
