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| Sunday, 7 November 2004 |
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Arafat stable amid puzzle over burial and successor PARIS, Saturday (Reuters) Yasser Arafat remained in a critical condition as uncertainty mounted over who might succeed him and where he might be buried should he die. One aide to the Palestinian president said he was "between life and death" in a coma, though one from which he could still recover. Others, hoping to calm fears of chaos back home, said his life was not in danger. A French spokesman at the military hospital near Paris where Arafat was rushed into an intensive care unit on Wednesday issued only a brief statement, 24 hours after the previous update. "The state of health of President Yasser Arafat has not got worse. He is considered to be stable compared to the last health bulletin," said Christian Estripeau, chief doctor at the Percy hospital in a southwestern suburb of the capital. The 75-year-old president, who for decades has symbolised the Palestinian struggle for statehood, was rushed to France from the West Bank on Oct. 29 with severe stomach pains, diarrhoea and vomiting. Doctors have ruled out leukaemia. "The French doctors have not yet been able to make a clear and definitive diagnosis of his disease," senior Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rdainah said. Some of Arafat's powers, over security and financing, have been handed to Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, a leading moderate. But he has not named a successor and Palestinians fear chaos as they wage a four-year-old uprising against Israel. |
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