PARIS -- The terrorist attack on the Greek cruise ship City of Poros was carried out with weapons traced to Libya and was staged by gunmen working for Palestinian extremist Abu Nidal to curry favor with Iran, Greek officials and an Arab intelligence source said Wednesday.
The Arab source said the attack was meant to avenge the deaths of 290 Iranians killed when an Iranian jetliner was shot down by the USS Vincennes.
Greek and other Western security sources have previously blamed Abu Nidal's terrorist group for the July 11 machine-gun and grenade attack that left nine people dead and 80 others wounded on the Greek cruise ship, but a motive for the assault had been unclear.
Circumstantial evidence tying Abu Nidal's Libyan-backed extremists to the attack came from Greek officials. They said weapons found on the ship and in a car that exploded in Athens hours before the attack were sold to Libya by a Belgian firm in 1975 and 1976.
One was an Italian-made Beretta 9mm machine pistol found aboard the City of Poros after the attack. Greek Public Order Minister Tassos Sehiotis said it was one of 2,000 delivered to Libya April 21, 1975, with 8,000 ammunition clips by the Fabrique Nationale Herstall, a Belgian arms maker.
The wreckage of a Datsun rental car that exploded near the Greek ship's mooring site on the day of the attack contained another Beretta machine gun. It was from a batch of 7,500 delivered to the Tripoli government of Col. Moammar Gadhafi in July 1976.
Also found was a Belgian-made 9mm Browning pistol, one of 10,000 handguns and 30,000 clips Herstall shipped to Libya in January 1980, Sehiotis said.
Authorities at first thought the terrorists wanted to free three Palestinians held by Greece. But the Arab intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their tactical objective was simply carnage.
He said the Abu Nidal group struck at the ship in retaliation for the missile downing of an Iranian jetliner July 3 by the U.S. cruiser Vincennes in the Persian Gulf, hoping to win concessions from Tehran.
'Abu Nidal's people, who have good relations with the Iranian intelligence service, planned and carried out the attack,' the source said. 'They thought that by launching a successful attack, the Iranians would owe them a favor, which means money, facilities and closer coordination between the group and the Iranians.'
The Fatah Revolutionary Council in Beirut denied responsibility for the operation, saying that the Palestinian accused by Greece of having led the terror raid died in 1985.
But the Arab official said the group issued the denial because it wants to transform itself from an underground guerrilla and terrorist force to a 'popular' Palestinian faction.
Experts say the Revolutionary Council has training camps and offices in Libya, in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon and in South Yemen, where its shadowy leader is said to reside. Security sources said it also has used facilities in Iran.
Despite evidence Abu Nidal attacked the ship, a French security official questioned whether approval came from the top.
'It was not in Abu Nidal's interest,' the official said of the ship attack. 'It could be members of Abu Nidal, but they were not working for Abu Nidal.'
He said Abu Nidal bought two apartments near the Athens airport in June 1987, suggesting he intended to keep using Greece as a staging area for European operations.
The official said some Abu Nidal members may have been under contract to pro-Iranian Shiite Moslem fundamentalists in Lebanon, such as the Hezbollah, or Party of God.
Besides taking revenge on the West, he said, the fundamentalists may have been sending the message to Tehran that they are unwilling to demobilize if Iran makes peace with Iraq and gives less emphasis to exporting its Islamic revolution.
Abu Nidal, whose real name is Sabri Al-Banna, launched his group in 1974 with Iraqi backing. In 1980 he switched allegiance to Syria, with which his group maintains close ties, experts say. But Libya has been his main sponsor since 1984.
The group's trademark, as illustrated in the attack on the City of Poros, is indiscriminate bloodshed. It has claimed responsibility or been blamed for many attacks, including a September 1986 massacre in an Istanbul synagogue and assaults on Israeli airline counters in the Rome and Vienna airports in 1987.
It was suspected of carrying out the bombing of a Berlin discotheque in April 1986, which triggered the U.S. bombing raids on Tripoli and Bengazi, Libya.
