Yasser Arafat was close to death in a French hospital on Thursday night after repeatedly losing consciousness, but doctors denied reports that he was already dead.
The Percy military hospital, near Paris, said Arafat was moved to the intensive care unit after his still undiagnosed condition deteriorated critically. But after a flurry of reports that he was brain dead or in a coma, Arafat’s wife, Suha, asked the hospital to issue a statement clarifying that her husband was still alive.
“Mr Arafat is not dead,” said Christian Estripeau, a spokesperson for the hospital. “The clinical situation of the first days following admission has deteriorated … This statement has been drafted out of respect for the discretion demanded by his wife.”
Arafat’s personal physician, Ashraf Kurdi, also said the Palestinian leader’s condition “is deteriorating”. He said: “Because there has been no diagnosis, we don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
Arafat’s chief aide, Ramzi Khoury, described him as being in a “grave condition”.
In the early afternoon, a motorcade brought the French president Jacques Chirac to the hospital. His office said that he had “seen Yasser Arafat and his wife, to whom he expressed his best wishes”, however it was not clear whether the Palestinian leader had been conscious during the visit.
Palestinian security chiefs were called to an emergency meeting at the compound in Ramallah where Arafat was held a virtual prisoner by the Israelis for more than two years to discuss how to handle what many there expected was their leader’s imminent death.
The leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation also met and agreed to cede more of Arafat’s powers to the prime minister, Ahmed Qureia.
Qureia and his foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, were expected to travel to the Gaza Strip to press Palestinian factions there to avoid conflict with each other during the crisis over Arafat’s health.
Rumours of Arafat’s demise swept the occupied territories after an Israeli television channel said he was dead.
The confusion was compounded when the prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, arrived at an EU summit and claimed that Arafat had died 15 minutes earlier. He later retracted the statement, blaming it on a misunderstanding.
In Washington, United States President George Bush was asked for his reaction to Arafat’s supposed death. “My first reaction is God bless his soul,” he said. “My second reaction is that we will continue to work for a free Palestinian state that’s at peace with Israel.” Mrs Arafat fuelled the confusion by barring from seeing her husband any Palestinian officials other than his cousin, the Palestinian representative to the UN, Nasser al-Kidwa.
No new pictures of Arafat, which officials are usually keen to release when there is a health scare to reassure worried Palestinians, have been seen since he entered the hospital. French media reports quoted hospital sources as saying he was brain dead and had gone into a deep, irreversible coma. Dozens of Palestinians and other supporters from the Arab world gathered outside the hospital to pay last respects.
Arafat was airlifted to Paris a week ago after four teams of doctors from Arab countries failed to discover what had caused the Palestinian leader to collapse and lose consciousness. Doctors speculated that he had a blood disease but the Percy hospital says it has ruled out leukaemia.
Palestinian officials said that Arafat’s health improved significantly within a couple of days of his arrival in Paris and that they did not believe his condition was life threatening.
On Wednesday morning, Arafat’s aides said he asked about the US presidential election and dispatched a telegram to Bush congratulating him. But his condition deteriorated and he lapsed in and out of consciousness through the night and yesterday.
Israeli security officials met on Thursday to discuss how to handle Arafat’s death when it happens. The defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, and army chief of staff, General Moshe Ya’alon, discussed the military’s contingency plan, called New Leaf, to deal with a range of situations including the possibility of mass protests to demand that Arafat be buried within Jerusalem’s old city, which Israel has said it will not permit. – Guardian Unlimited Â