arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

BRUSSELS - The European Union will add the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to a list of banned terrorist groups next week, EU sources said Friday.

They said that the groups would join the list of organizations whose assets must be frozen in all 15 EU member states.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military arm of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, has claimed responsibility for several suicide bombings. The PFLP was behind the assassination of far-right minister Rehavam Ze'evi at a Jerusalem hotel last year.

The sources said that a third group, the smaller Palestinian Liberation Front, would also be added to the list. Islamic Jihad and the Hamas military wing are already on the list, created last December in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The decision to add the militant Palestinian groups will take place on Monday when EU foreign miniters meet in Luxembourg.

The EU decision, approved in secret by ambassadors this week, may be largely symbolic since none of the groups is thought to have substantial assets or networks in Europe. It comes just as the European Commission is rebutting Israeli accusations that EU aid money to Arafat's Palestinian Authority has been used to fund terrorists.

The European Parliament has blocked the release of 18.7 million euros in EU budget aid to the Palestinians pending clarification by the Commission of how it is spent.

External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten and Budget Commissioner Michaele Schreyer are due to brief a joint session of Parliament's budget and foreign affairs committee on the issue next Wednesday.

Commission spokesman Gunnar Wiegand said the EU executive had investigated charges made by Minister Danny Naveh (Likud) last month and found them to be without foundation.

IDF intelligence officials who met EU and International Monetary Fund representatives last week failed to provide any evidence to corroborate the allegations, he said.

Israeli diplomats had admitted privately there was no proof of the political charges, an EU official said.