"Yasser Arafat lived and worked in the hard conditions of political instability, which often escalated to bloody conflicts. But we remember that he was the first Arab leader to respond to the appeal on peace talks in the Holy Land and took much effort to make these talks successful," reads the patriarch's message.
The prelate of the Russian Orthodox Church stressed that Arafat's contribution to the establishment of peace in the region was marked by the 1994 Nobel Prize for peace.
The leader of the Palestinian National Autonomy has been fighting for national interests of Palestinian Arabs for many years, Alexis II noted. He asked Ahmed Qurei and Mahmoud Abbas to send his condolences to relatives of the deceased.
"God rest his soul," Alexis II concluded.
