Aides trying to seize power from Arafat, says wife
Despite the row, Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas left the West Bank for Jordan, to get a flight to Paris to visit Mr Arafat and consult with his doctors.
In a screaming telephone call from Mr Arafat’s hospital bedside, Suha Arafat told Al-Jazeera television that Mr Arafat’s aides were conspiring to usurp her husband as Palestinian leader.
“Let it be known to the honest Palestinian people that a bunch of those who want to inherit are coming to Paris,” she shouted in Arabic in her first public comments since Mr Arafat left his West Bank compound for France. “I tell you they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive,” she added, using Mr Arafat’s nom de guerre. “He is all right and he is going home.”
In response, the top aides to Mr Arafat briefly cancelled their trip to Paris, but Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath later said the trip was back on.
A senior aide to Arafat, Tayeb Abdel Rahim said: “What came from Suha doesn’t represent our people. If the president were to hear that, he would reject it completely.”
He said Mrs Arafat “wanted to destroy the Palestinian leadership’s decision and to be the lone decision-maker.”
Mrs Arafat said she was calling from Mr Arafat’s bedside at the French military hospital, where the 75-year-old leader has been in intensive care since Wednesday.
A producer from Al-Jazeera said the station was confident it was Suha Arafat on the phone.
Her insistence that Mr Arafat was doing fine came a day after French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier called his condition “very complex, very serious and stable right now.”
Palestinians have been making contingency plans in the event of Mr Arafat’s death. Mr Qureia and Mr Abbas have been working together to run Palestinian affairs in Mr Arafat’s absence and to prevent chaos and violence if the Palestinian leader dies. Mr Qureia has taken on some of Mr Arafat’s executive and security powers, while Mr Abbas has been chairing meetings of the PLO executive.
Jamil Tarifi, the Palestinian minister of civil affairs, told Al-Jazeera the group was initially hesitant about going, but decided the trip would help “reassure” worried Palestinians. Some Palestinians have complained Suha Arafat has gained too much power. She controls the flow of information about Mr Arafat’s condition and has taken charge of access to her husband. “It’s an absurd situation that Suha is sitting there and deciding when, how and who,” Sufian Abu Zaida, a Palestinian Authority official said.
Mrs Arafat, 41, lives in Paris, and had not seen her husband since the latest round of Palestinian violence began in 2000. She is widely believed to have control of vast funds collected by the PLO.
Palestinian officials have said Mr Arafat wants to be buried in Jerusalem, but Israel has rejected that demand.
Israeli officials said preparations were complete for Mr Arafat to be buried in the Gaza Strip.
