BACKGROUND

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is a former commander of the underground Stern gang, which fought British rule of Palestine. In 1988, two former Stern gang members said they were involved in the 1948 assassination of Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, a U.N. mediator. They said Bernadotte was slain because he planned to grant the United Nations control over Jerusalem and hand over key areas to Arabs. The two men did not mention Shamir, and the prime minister’s aides denied his involvement. But former Stern leader Yisrael Scheib-Eldad has said the group’s commanders approved the killing, “and I don’t remember anyone opposing it.”