A Palestinian call for an international probe into Yasser Arafat's death won official backing from Tunisia on Thursday, after a report showed the iconic leader may have been poisoned.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki told the official Voice of Palestine radio on Thursday that such an enquiry

could finally "close the file" on Arafat's mysterious death.

AndTunisia called for the Arab League to convene.

On Tuesday, Al-Jazeera television broadcast the results of a nine-month probe it commissioned into the 2004 death of the veteran Palestinian leader that indicated he could have been poisoned with the radioactive substance polonium.

The next day Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who succeeded Arafat, endorsed exhuming his body from its mausoleum for a forensic examination.

Tunis hosted the Palestine Liberation Organisation, of which Arafat was the chairman, after it was expelled from Lebanon during the 1982 Israeli invasion and until the 1994 launch of Palestinian autonomy.

Suha Arafat, wife of the Palestinian leader, gave Al-Jazeera permission to take the items, which contained strands of Arafat's hair and traces of sweat, urine and blood, for testing at several European laboratories, including the Swiss institute, which reported finding high levels of polonium.

Suha Arafat rejected an autopsy after her husband's death but on Wednesday told AFP that she was "immediately to send a formal letter to the Swiss laboratory that conducted the tests, to authorise collection of samples of the remains of the martyr Arafat to verify the results."