WORLD NEWS

DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates condemned on Sunday the abuse of European passports by the assassins of a top Hamas figure in Dubai, as police said some of the killers entered the country with diplomatic passports.

The Dubai police chief also called for Hamas to conduct an internal investigation into the killing, pointing to a possible mole in the Palestinian Islamist movement.

"The UAE is deeply concerned by the fact that passports of close allies, whose nationals currently enjoy preferential visa waivers, were illegally used to commit this crime," said a foreign ministry statement, carried by the official WAM news agency.

Mahmud al-Mabhuh, a founder of Hamas' armed wing, was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai on January 20.

The UAE's minister of state for foreign affairs, Dr Anwar Gargash, has summoned European Union ambassadors to the UAE to brief them on developments in the case and to seek their continued cooperation with the investigation, the statement said.

"The abuse of passports poses a global threat, affecting both countries' national security as well as the personal security of travellers," UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan said in the statement.

"We fully intend that those responsible are brought to account for their actions," he said.

Meanwhile, Dubai police chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan said some of Mabhuh's killers used diplomatic passports to enter the country.

"There is information that Dubai police will not make public for the moment, especially regarding diplomatic passports" used by some of Mahmud al-Mabhuh's killers to enter Dubai, Khalfan was quoted by Al-Bayan newspaper as saying.

Dubai police last week released the names and photos of 11 suspects in Mabhuh's killing who entered the UAE on European passports, six from Britain, three from Ireland, one from Germany and one from France.

Those passports appear to have been falsified or stolen, as they belonged to what appear to be ordinary citizens shocked to learn of their being linked to the case.

Khalfan had not previously mentioned any of the suspects holding diplomatic passports.

However, he said last week in a Dubai TV interview that there were others implicated in the killing whose names have not yet been made public.

The use of European passports has sparked a diplomatic furor in which Israeli envoys in the four countries have been summoned for talks.

But on Saturday, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon insisted there would be no diplomatic crisis with Europe over the use of foreign passports in the Mabhuh murder "as Israel had nothing to do with what happened."

Khalfan, however, has said he is "99, if not 100 percent" sure that Mossad was behind the assassination, and added on Saturday that Dubai had evidence, including wiretaps, of the agency's role.

The UK's Sunday Times said the killing was carried out by Israel's spy agency Mossad with the green light and blessing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.