GAZA CITY: MAHMOUD DARWISH, the world's most recognised Palestinian poet, whose prose gave voice to the Palestinian experience of exile, occupation and infighting, died yesterday in Houston, Texas. He was 67.

He died following open heart surgery.

Born to a Muslim family in historical Palestine, he emerged as a Palestinian cultural icon who eloquently described his people's struggle for independence, and as a vocal critic of both the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian leadership.

He gave voice to the Palestinian dreams of statehood, crafted their declaration of independence and helped forge a Palestinian national identity.

Darwish first gained prominence in the 1960s with the publication of his first poetry collection, Bird without Wings.

Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, read by the late Palestinian leader YASSER ARAFAT when he unilaterally declared statehood. The declaration was symbolic and had no concrete significance.

Last year, Darwish recited a poem damning the deadly infighting between rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah, describing it as "a public attempt at suicide in the streets".

Darwish was born in the Palestinian village of Birweh near Haifa that was destroyed in the 1948 Mideast war.

He joined the Palestine Liberation Organisation but resigned in 1993 in protest over the interim peace accords that Arafat signed with Israel. Darwish moved to the West Bank city of Ramallah in 1996.

In 2000, Israel's education minister, YOSSI SARID, suggested including some of Darwish's poems in the Israeli high school curriculum, but was overruled by prime minister EHUD BARAK.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President MAHMOUD ABBAS will send a plane to repatriate the body of Darwish.

Officials also said that Abbas had "asked Palestinian officials to contact the Israeli authorities to press them (to allow) for the burial of Darwish in his native Galilee," in northern Israel.