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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 5, 1992                   TAG: 9202050099
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NICOSIA, CYPRUS                                LENGTH: Short

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SECRET ARAFAT MARRIAGE REVEALED

PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, who long vowed he was married only to the Palestinian struggle, has found a wife at age 62 - his 28-year-old secretary, Palestinian sources said Tuesday.

His bride, Suha Tawil, is a Palestinian Christian from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the sources said. She met Arafat in 1988.

They were married in November by a Muslim priest at Arafat's home in Tunis, said the sources, who insisted on anonymity. Only a few friends and the bride's mother, Palestinian activist and writer Raymonda Tawil, were present, they said.

Arafat is a Sunni Muslim. His marriage to a much younger Christian was expected to draw criticism from the conservative Palestinian community. The vast majority of the world's 5 million Palestinians are Muslims.

Speaking by telephone from Tunis, the sources said Arafat and Suha Tawil met when she was a student at the Sorbonne in France. She had traveled to Tunisia to visit her mother, a friend of Arafat's who was working at the Palestinian news agency WAFA, they said.

After completing her studies in political science in 1989, Tawil returned to Tunis. A few months later, she was hired as a secretary to Arafat.

Asked why the marriage had not been officially announced, one of the sources said he believed Arafat was unsure how Palestinians would react.

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