"I will fight it as I fought a lot of things," Arafat said in an interview in English at her home in Malta where she is currently living after Tunisian authorities said they had issued an international warrant for her arrest.

"I was so much astonished, badly astonished actually because I was a victim of the Tunisian dictatorship," said the 48-year-old, adding that she had "not been informed officially" of any warrant and had read about it in the press.

The state news agency reported Monday that the warrant had been issued last week over Suha Arafat's role in a scandal involving former Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his family.

Suha Arafat lived in Tunisia after Yasser Arafat's death in France in 2004, but left a few years later after falling out with the then-president's family.

Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization, or the PLO, was headquartered in the Tunisian capital for years following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Suha Arafat once served as secretary to the famed Palestinian leader, and they secretly married in 1990.

Speaking to journalists over phone earlier Monday, she said: "I reject all the accusations listed in the media; I am ready to deal with this issue, to submit documents, and I have entrusted a Tunisian lawyer to present these documents." "I have had no connection since 2007 with the issue of the International School," said the widow of the former Palestinian leader, who died in 2004.

She said that she had sold her shares to Asma Mahjoub, the niece of Leila, wife of former (Tunisian) president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

She added "payments made by her to contribute to the capital of the International School was a loan of 300,000 Tunisian dinars ($212,000) obtained from the Housing Bank of Tunisia." "I have paid out the loan and when I gave up my share, I only made 30,000 dinars," she said.

She stressed she had no connection "with any case in which Ben Ali's name is mentioned" and called for her name "not to be linked" to the wife of the ousted Tunisian president.

Born into a well-to-do Christian Palestinian family, Arafat married the historic leader in 1990. She served as secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was based in Tunisia between 1982 and 1994.

Suha Arafat was stripped of her Tunisian nationality less than a year after acquiring it. She was expelled and settled in Malta, where her brother served as Palestinian ambassador.