Dubai: International terrorist Abu Nidal, who died in Baghdad this week, ordered the bomb attack on a Gulf Air plane in 1983 that killed all 111 people on board, one of his former lieutenants said.

Atef Abu Baqr told 'Al-Hayat' newspaper that Abu Nidal ordered the bombing of the plane shortly after take-off from Abu Dhabi to the Southern Pakistani city of Karachi to punish the United Arab Emirates for not having paid any funds to his organisation, the Fatah Revolutionary Council.

"This operation has never been directly claimed before," Baqr said of the September 23, 1983 attack that left all 105 passengers and six crewmembers dead.

The attack had "displeased and provoked" Baghdad, home at the time to Abu Nidal and his associates, according to Baqr.

Iraqi authorities began to change their attitude to Abu Nidal from 1981, shortly after President Saddam Hussein came to power, because of "Arab and international pressure on Iraq" and the improvement in relations between Baghdad and Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation, he said.

It was Iraq's current Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, described by Abu Nidal as an "American mine planted in Iraq," who ordered the Palestinian out of Baghdad in 1983, Baqr said.

Iraqi intelligence chief Taher Jalil Habbush announced on August 22 that Abu Nidal had shot himself dead after being discovered living illegally in Baghdad and facing interrogation for anti-Iraqi activities.

His followers insisted that the militant, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna, was killed by Iraqi intelligence agents and not by his own hand.