CLAMART, France (AFP) - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was gravely ill but still alive and there was no question of switching off life-support equipment, foreign minister Nabil Shaath said, dismissing death reports.
Following conflicting rumours, Shaath told journalists here the condition of 75-year-old Arafat had worsened and he was in a deep coma, but that his heart, brain and lungs were functioning.
Arafat, symbol of the Palestinian struggle for nationhood, is in intensive care in a military hospital outside Paris under treatment for an undiagnosed blood disorder.
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell meanwhile said his country was willing to work with whichever leaders Palestinians chose in the event of Arafat`s death.
Shaath was accompanied on a 24-hour visit to Paris by three other top Palestinians -- prime minister Ahmed Qorei, parliamentary speaker Rawhi Fattuh and former prime minister Mahmud Abbas. Shaath told journalists: "Now the president is very much alive and his body is resisting.
"He will live or die depending on his body`s ability to resist and the will of God."
The French army`s medical service reiterated that the patient was in a "deeper coma."
A Palestinian cabinet minister and a senior Palestinian official in France had earlier told AFP that Arafat had died at the Percy military hospital in the Paris suburb of Clamart where he was hospitalised on October 29.
"For sure he is dead," said the minister, who spoke to AFP in Ramallah on condition of anonymity at around 1430 GMT. "It`s a question of how and when to announce it."
The Palestinian source in Paris said that it was "just a matter of hours before they make an official announcement", adding that Arafat`s most senior lieutenants had been seen offering condolences to his wife Suha.
The source said only Qorei of the four-strong delegation had actually visited Arafat at his bedside. "Abu Alaa fainted when he saw the rais (Arafat)," the source added.
The Palestinian delegation went to Paris against the wishes of Arafat`s wife, but Shaath indicated that relations with her had warmed, saying she "received us in the hospital, embraced all of us and allowed us to visit the president."
Suha Arafat had earlier accused the delegation on Al-Jazeera television of coming to Paris "to try and bury" Arafat.
She has also used France`s privacy laws to control access to her husband and severely limit information about his health.
In Israel there was widespread speculation that the visit was also linked to the question of access to Arafat`s personal fortune when he dies, with the Palestinian leadership anxious that Suha does not have a controlling hand.
"Arafat has enormous sums of money at his disposal, and any difficulties with respect to a leadership transition in the Palestinian camp are related to that money," said Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
Shaath gave a lengthy account of Arafat`s condition to journalists, denying that life support machines would be unplugged:
"I want to rule out any question of euthanasia. People talk as if his life can be plugged in or plugged out. This is ridiculous. We Muslims do not allow euthanasia."
During his three-year siege in his Ramallah headquarters at the hands of the Israeli army, Arafat had been suffering from "a variety of digestive tract ailments," Shaath said.
"So he had serious inflammations of the stomach and the intestines ... along with a period without nutrition, and this led to deterioration in the situation of the blood chemistry and the blood composition."
At a press conference in Ramallah, negotiations minister Saeb Erakat also denied that Arafat had died.
He said that Arafat had been suffering from a severe brain haemorrhage.
"All efforts are being made by our friends the French doctors to relieve this haemorrhaging," Erakat said.
A joint emergency meeting of the PLO executive committee and the central committee of Arafat`s Fatah faction was convened in Ramallah.
Leaders of the various Palestinian factions also gathered for an emergency meeting in Gaza City to discuss arrangements for an official announcement of his death, said a leader of the radical Islamic Jihad organisation, Khaled Al Batsh.
Shaath sought to reassure the international community that systems were in place to ensure the functioning of the Palestinian Authority if Arafat should die.
He said the Palestinian parliamentary speaker would become interim president, and would try to arrange presidential elections within 60 days.
Speaking in Mexico City, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said his country was willing to work with whatever leaders the Palestinians choose in the event of Yasser Arafat`s death.
"The US remains ready to engage with the Palestinian leadership as the Palestinians define that leadership," Powell said.
"We will see what happens in the days ahead, but our commitment to the two-state solution on the basis of the roadmap ... remains intact," he said.
An agreement on funeral arrangements to be made in the aftermath of Arafat`s death was reached Tuesday by Israeli and Palestinian officials, a senior Palestinian official said.
"Senior Palestinian and Israeli officials have reached an agreement in principle on the arrangements to be made after the death of president Arafat," the official told AFP.
11/09/2004 - 21:29 GMT - AFP