AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar - Italy said Wednesday that it would seek the extradition of captured Palestinian Abu Abbas, mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of an Italian cruise ship.
The Palestinian Authority demanded his release, saying his detention violated a 1995 Middle East peace deal.
But the United States, whose special forces seized Abbas in Baghdad Monday, said that deal concerned arrangements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
"It does not apply to the legal status of persons detained in a third country," a U.S. State Department official said.
Abbas, who is also known as Mohammed Abbas and is now in his mid-50s, spent much of the past 17 years in Baghdad.
In the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, guerrillas killed a disabled elderly American Jewish passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, shooting him and pushing his wheelchair over the side.
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In Rome, Justice Minister Roberto Castelli said Italy was anxious to put Abbas on trial. He said the Italian government had asked Egypt and Jordan in recent months for his extradition when Rome believed that he may have been in those countries.
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Abbas was not aboard the Achille Lauro, but Italian courts sentenced him in absentia to life in prison for planning the operation. After the hijacking ended at Port Said in Egypt, the four hijackers freed the passengers and managed to escape.
Days later, U.S. jet fighters intercepted an Egyptian plane carrying them and Abbas to freedom in Tunisia and forced it to land at a NATO air base at Sigonella, Sicily.
A tense standoff between U.S. troops and Italian police at the air base ensued. The four hijackers were arrested but then Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, a Socialist, let Abbas fly to Yugoslavia and freedom.
The United States was outraged by Craxi's decision and the episode sparked one of the worst crises between Rome and Washington since the end of World War Two.
In 1998, the Israeli Supreme Court, citing interim peace deals with the Palestinians, declared Abbas immune from prosecution in Israel over the ship's hijacking.
