Following the development of the second Intifada in 2001, former US President George W Bush directed the CIA to look for a replacement for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the BBC reported, quoting recently revealed British papers.

The US initiative followed the failure of the Camp David negotiations in 2000 between Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The meetings were in response to an increase in violence in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

According to the BBC papers, Bush predicted early on that Ariel Sharon, who followed Barak, would utilize the Gaza Strip to foment tensions among Palestinians.

The documents deal with negotiations that took place between the UK and the US a few months after Bush and his neoconservative-dominated administration assumed office.

When Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, the second Palestinian uprising was at its height. It erupted in late September 2000, when Sharon entered the courtyards of Al Aqsa Mosque, an act generally perceived as provocative by Palestinians.

The Bush administration urged Arafat to halt the uprising in order to lay the framework for the start of security negotiations with Israel. It also vetoed a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council that called for the deployment of a UN observer force to protect Palestinian residents in the occupied areas from Israeli soldiers.

Following the failure of the discussions, Bush and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke by phone about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

According to the minutes of the talks, the prime minister said Arafat was “a liability.”

He added the Palestinian leader “had reached the boundaries of what he can do constructively and he is only working to protect his position”. He went on to say that Arafat “no longer has anything to offer,” implying that the leader has made all conceivable compromises.

Bush endorsed what Blair had said, then labeled Arafat as “weak and useless”. He disclosed that he had asked the CIA to hunt for possible successors to the Palestinian leader but said that the agency “researched the Palestinian situation thoroughly and determined that there is no replacement available”.

According to the British documents, the US secretary of state at the time, Colin Powell, disagreed with Bush’s hunt for a replacement for Arafat.

Arafat died a few years later, on November 11, 2004, in a Paris hospital, from a brain hemorrhage caused by polonium, a poisonous chemical detected on his clothes and body.

Palestinians and Arabs blamed Israel for his death. It denied any involvement in his death.