MADRID, June 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, visiting Spain Tuesday, dismissed a press report that the Basque militant group ETA had sent explosives to Hamas extremists, saying there was no shortage of such materiel in his home region.
"In the Middle East you can find all kinds of weapons and explosives," Arafat told a press conference. "There's no need to come to Europe."
He also said he had been told that the militant group Hamas, said to have been the beneficiary of the alleged delivery, had denied the report.
There has been no direct statement from Hamas.
The allegation surfaced on Monday in the conservative Spanish daily El Mundo, which said that ETA had sold an unknown quantity of dynamite to Hamas last year.
It said the explosives, which came from a 1.8-tonne (3,600-pound) consignment of dynamite stolen from a French factory in September 1999, was sold to Hamas in December, the daily added, quoting sources from the French part of the Basque country.
"Yesterday I was given a report in which Hamas denied the report," Arafat said.
Hamas has claimed responsibility for several bomb attacks in Israel recently, the latest being a suicide attack on a Tel Aviv nightclub that claimed 21 lives earlier this month.
ETA itself is waging a violent campaign for a separate Basque homeland comprising four provinces of northwestern Spain and part of southwestern France.
The El Mundo report claimed that a delegation from Hamas had visited the Spanish Basque country in late 2000 at the invitation of ETA's political wing Euskal Herritarrok.
