Arafat leadership refuses to pull the plug

Yasser Arafat hovered on the brink of death in a Paris hospital tonight - being kept alive artificially while a cleric flew from the West Bank to be by his side.

The Palestinian leadership visited the comatose 75-year-old in the military hospital and Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath ruled out any suggestion of removing Arafat from life support.

“His brain, his heart and his lungs are still functioning and he is alive,” Shaath said in Paris.

“I don’t see any reason to make rumours precipitating his death,” he added.

“I want to rule out any question of euthanasia. People talk like his life is plugged in and plugged out.”

But another senior Palestinian official said Arafat had only hours to live after suffering a brain haemorrhage .

At Arafat’s compound – the Muqata – in the West Bank town of Ramallah, top aide Abdel Rahim said Palestinian leaders would meet through the night “to follow everything and to agree on the details of the required arrangements”.

“If the fate of God comes, all the arrangements will be made here in the Muqata, which is considered a symbol of Palestinian steadfastness,” he said.

It appeared that any immediate dispute with Israel over a burial site had been avoided with a decision to have it inside the compound.

“We formed a committee to handle Arafat’s burial in the event of his death, and the burial will be in the Muqata,” Deputy Parliament Speaker Hassan Khreishe said

Another official said the Ramallah burial would be considered temporary, until Arafat could be reburied in Jerusalem.

He said the burial arrangements are being discussed with Israel.

The body would be sent directly from France, and there would not be a memorial service in another country.

Israel has ruled out a burial in Jerusalem or the city’s West Bank suburb of Abu Dis.

Asked about the Palestinians’ decision, Asaf Shariv, a top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said: “The prime minister said: ‘Not in Jerusalem and not in Abu Dis.’ We haven’t discussed Ramallah yet. We will discuss it and decide.”

The US and Europe plan to refrain from sending heads of state to a funeral should Yasser Arafat die, opting instead to dispatch lower level officials.

The deeply comatose Arafat took a critical turn for the worse today and a Palestinian minister who met his doctors said “only God knows” whether he will will survive.

After going to Arafat’s bedside, Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and other senior officials met French President Jacques Chirac, who first took the decision to accept Arafat for treatment. Arafat was flown to Paris on October 29.

A top Islamic cleric, Taissir Dayut Tamimi, said he was rushing to Arafat’s bedside at the request of Palestinian officials “to be near President Arafat at this crucial time”.

Tamimi, head of the Islamic court in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, did not elaborate. However, his opinion might be sought in any decision to remove Arafat from life support equipment.

Earlier, the French medical team treating Arafat publicly acknowledged for the first time that he is in a coma.

“President Yasser Arafat’s health worsened in the night,” said General Christian Estripeau, spokesman for the Percy Military Hospital outside Paris. “His coma, which led to his admission to the intensive care unit, became deeper this morning.”

Estripeau said his deterioration marked “a significant stage”.

The announcement followed a dramatic dispute between Arafat’s wife, Suha, and the visiting Palestinian officials whom she accused of trying to topple the veteran leader.

The delegation also included former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, the deputy chairman of Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation, Foreign Minister Shaath and Parliament Speaker Rauhi Fattouh.

Shaath said after the hospital visit that lasted more than two hours that the disagreement with Suha Arafat was now over.

In an angry outburst, Suha Arafat had accused the leaders of travelling to Paris to try and oust her husband from power and “bury” him “alive”.

The accusation outraged the Palestinian leadership and set the stage for a dramatic showdown that could have inflamed a tense power struggle between Arafat’s long-time lieutenants and his wife.

Many Palestinians complained Suha Arafat gained too much power, as she controlled the flow of information about her husband’s condition and took charge of access to the ailing leader.

Suha Arafat, his wife of 13 years and mother of his daughter, seems to have aligned herself with hard-liners who apparently seek to take over the Palestinian leadership in a post-Arafat era, though some Palestinian officials said her motives are more financial.

According to a senior official in Arafat’s office, she has received monthly payments of almost £54,000 (€77,700) from Palestinian coffers and is widely believed to have control of vast funds collected by the PLO.

This year, French prosecutors launched a money-laundering probe into transfers of more than £6m (€8.6m) into her accounts. She has refused to talk to reporters about Palestinian finances.

Suha Arafat, 41, lives in Paris and has not been to the West Bank or seen her husband since the latest round of Palestinian violence began in 2000.

Palestinians have been making contingency plans in the event of Arafat’s death.

Qureia has assumed some emergency financial and administrative powers. Abbas has chaired a series of meetings of the PLO executive committee. But neither politician has much grass-roots support among Palestinians or important militant groups.