The Times, Malta
Wednesday 01 November 1995
Ramadan Abdatlah Shallah, the man chosen as leader of the anti-Israel group, Islamic Jihad, helped run a controversial US think tank on Islamic affairs, an expert on radical groups. Steven Emerson, the producer of the PBS documentary "Jahad in America" said Shallah was administration director of the World and Islamic studies Enterprise (WISE) that was once associated with the University of South Florida in Tampa. Emerson, who is completing a book on radical Islamic networks, said that WISE was a front for the views of radical Islamic groups and sponsored conferences in which radical fundamental Moslem leaders from Tunisia and the Sudan were featured.
A spokesman for WISE could not be reached for comment. Noreen Segrest, general counsel for University of South Florida, said that WISE had an agreement with the university starting in March 1992 that was suspended in September 1995 after a newspaper series reported that WISE was possibly funnelling money to terrorist entities.
Although the reports were not substantiated by law enforcement they led the university to reassess it's relations with off-campus organisations.
As a result of that, we don't have a current relationship with WISE, nor do we anticipate entering into another one, Segrest said.
WISE had previously denied that it was anything more than a think tank on Islamic affairs. Emerson said the group had made presentations at seminars sponsored by the US military. Sources in Islamic Jihad said in Gaza that Shallah 49, was chosen to succeed Fathi Shqaqi as secretary general of the radical group. Shqaqi was assassinated last Thursday in Malta and Islamic Jihad blamed Israel's Mossad secret service for the killing. (Reuter).
Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin said yesterday he hoped for a reconciliation between the PLO and it's main Muslem militant rival, which he hoped would end "terrorism."
Tayeb Abdel-Rahim, secretary general of PLO head Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority running Gaza and Jerico, said this month that Hamas had agreed to talks with the PLO at Egypt's invitation, but had not yet set a date. "I very much hope that the Palestinian Authority will reach an agreement with Hamas because for me it is not important how terrorism will be stopped" Rabin told reporters.
"If it can be stopped as the result of an agreement, the result the result of stopping terrorism is what is important to me", he said. Hamas, which remains implacably opposed to Israel, has killed scores of Israeli's in suicide bomb attacks. But recently it and the PLO have been making noises about reconciliation and the PLO has stepped up contacts with Hamas.
Hamas is the leading Muslem militant group among Palestinians followed by Islamic Jihad, whose Leader Fathi Shqaqi was was killed in Malta last week in an assassination that Islamic Jihad blamed on Israel. Hamas leaders at home and abroad have appeared at odds over how to deal with with the Palestinian Authority as Israel hands over Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank to the PLO.(Reuters).