By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 3, 1997; Page A29

Canada recalled its ambassador to Israel today to protest the use of forged Canadian passports in a reputed attempt to assassinate a leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas in Jordan.

"It has been determined beyond a reasonable doubt, to my knowledge, that they were forged," David Kilgour, a Foreign Affairs Ministry official told the Canadian Parliament. Quizzed by opposition politicians about the incident, Kilgour said the government "takes the matter very seriously" and is trying to determine exactly what happened.

In New York, Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy said: "We, of course, take great exception to the use of the reputation of a Canadian passport for those kinds of purposes." Axworthy met with Jordanian and Israeli diplomats about what Prime Minister Jean Chretien has called the "completely unacceptable" use of a passport Canadians consider the most widely accepted in the world. "We recalled our ambassador, which in terms of our relationship is a very serious step to take," Axworthy said.

Canadian Ambassador David Berger was to return here from Israel today to discuss what further steps his country might take, and Israel's envoy in Ottawa was summoned to a meeting with Canadian officials tonight.

Canada's protest, while not an official accusation, added weight to assertions by Hamas officials in Amman, the Jordanian capital, that two Canadian passport-holders implicated in the alleged attack there were in fact Israeli agents bent on assassination. It seemed likely to increase pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to address the questions raised about his government's role in the affair.

The two men were arrested Sept. 25 in connection with a purported attack of an as yet unexplained nature on Khaled Meshal – political chief of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement – and are still held in Amman. Although carrying Canadian passports, the two refused the aid of the Canadian Embassy in Amman and asked that their names not be released.

Today, Jordanian officials said the two were identified in police documents as Shawn Kendall, 28, and Barry Beads, 36, according to the Associated Press. Another man carrying a Canadian passport is believed to have been involved as well, a Jordanian official told the AP. A Canadian security analyst said only a full investigation can determine whether the names on the travel documents were simply fabricated or are those of Canadian citizens who may have lost or sold their passports.

Arab assertions that the arrested men were involved in some sort of Israeli security operation appeared to gain credence Wednesday when Israel freed the imprisoned spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin. The abrupt release of Yassin, who was sentenced in 1989 to life imprisonment, followed a weekend of tense regional diplomacy during which Jordan's King Hussein charged that the two detained men were undercover agents.

Israeli media asserted that the release of Yassin was part of a swap with Jordan for the two men detained there, but Hussein said today that Jordan has made no commitments in return, the Reuter news agency reported. "I believe there is no deal," the king said. "A deal is usually this for that, and none of this happened. I think the issue was a wish for humanitarian moves to be made."

Because of Canada's neutral and generally pacifist foreign policy, Canadians think of their passport as the most valuable in the world, a document that lets them move around the globe without suspicion or hassle.

In the 1970s, however, it turned out that it was also the preferred travel document for covert agents, said Capt. Nicholas Stethem, an analyst with the Royal Canadian Military Institute. Publication in 1990 of the book "By Way of Deception" by Victor Ostrovsky, a former intelligence operative, confirmed this, Stethem said, with its descriptions of piles of blank Canadian passports that Israeli espionage officials had obtained for use by spies.

Canada's response was to redesign its passport, adding a holographic image and other features to try to prevent its misuse.