Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s condition is ”extremely grave” and he will probably not recover from his illness, a French doctor said on Thursday.
The 75-year-old Arafat ”is still in a coma”, said the doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The doctor said Arafat is not responding to treatment, and added: ”He will not recover.”
However, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei told reporters Arafat is not in a coma and that new test results by his doctors in France are positive.
The doctor’s statements appear to confirm earlier reports from a Palestinian source who said Arafat was lying in a coma after losing consciousness three times.
The source said that doctors at the Percy Military Training hospital near Paris were able to revive him twice, but that he had not recovered after losing consciousness a third time early on Thursday.
That report was immediately denied by Arafat aide Nabil Abou Roudeina, who said the Palestinian leader is ”not unconscious and also not in a coma … these are only rumours”.
However, LCI television reported on Thursday that a French government official said Arafat’s condition is ”serious, even very serious”, and that the Israeli government has been informed.
In addition, Palestinian sources in Ramallah said Palestinian leaders, including members of the central committee of Arafat’s Fatah movement and Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, were going into an emergency session.
Arafat, who has been treated for an unspecified blood ailment in the Percy hospital since last Friday, was placed in the hospital’s intensive-care station on Wednesday.
According to the first official bulletin on Arafat’s health, issued on Tuesday, he is suffering from an elevated white-blood-cell count and persistent problems of digestion. — Sapa-DPA
Arafat reports ‘worrying’
Meanwhile, in Brussels, European Commission chief Romano Prodi said on Thursday that the latest reports about Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s deteriorating health are ”extremely worrying”.
”I hope that this is a false alarm. I hope that his health will stabilise,” he said, speaking in Brussels where European Union leaders were gathering for a two-day summit.
”The latest news from Paris is extremely worrying,” he said. — Sapa-AFP, Sapa-DPA
Arafat in intensive care