Palestinian official denies Abbas was KGB agent

Responding to the report that Mahmoud Abbas was a KGB agent in Syria in 1983, a top Palestinian official says its all malarkey tied to the failed bid for a Netanyahu-Abbas meeting in Moscow.

Fatah apparatchik Nabil Shaath calls the report a hollow attempt to evade the Russian invite for a summit in Moscow, according to Israel radio reporter Gal Berger.

“He was not an agent of the KGB or any other intelligence agency,” Shaath says.

The report of Abbas’s Moscow ties came on the heels of swirling reports of a possible Netanyahu-Abbas meeting in Moscow, though each side accused the other of being unwilling to meet.

The man in the center of the bid to broker the meeting, Putin Mideast envoy Mikhail Bogdanov, was a Russian diplomat in Damascus at the same time Abbas was reportedly a Soviet agent there