Posted on 11/04/2004 3:20:15 PM PST by RedBloodedAmerican
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was reportedly fighting for his life in a French hospital on Thursday night after he was rushed into intensive care on the day before, triggering rumors he had died, Palestinian officials in Ramallah and Paris announced.
The officials described Arafat's condition as "extremely critical" but refused to elaborate.
Late Thursday night, Suha Arafat, speaking to the leader of the southern faction of the Islamic Movement Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, said that her husband was not clinically dead and not in a coma. Mrs. Arafat said reports that her husband had died were "a festival of the Israeli media and is nothing but a lie," Israel Radio reported. She said she had visited with him earlier in the day, and that they talked and Arafat had responded to her. Mrs. Arafat said she was "incensed" at the Israeli media.
"I am standing next to the president's bed - he is in grave condition," Arafat's chief of staff, Ramzi Khoury, told an Associated Press reporter in Paris.
Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior aide to Arafat, told reporters in the Mukata compound in Ramallah late Thursday night that reports about the PA chairman's health condition were "inaccurate."
"At these difficult times, the Palestinian leadership is following, minute by minute, the health condition of the president, who is being treated in Paris," he said. "The Palestinian leadership is in constant contact with the French medical team and the Palestinian delegation accompanying the president inside the hospital."
Rahim urged the Palestinians to ignore rumors about Arafat's death and to pray for his recovery. He said Palestinian officials were holding round-the-clock meetings in Ramallah to assess the situation.
In a first reaction from the Israeli government to the reports from Paris, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suggested caution. "There are conflicting reports and I have instructed government ministers not to express their views on this matter until we have confirmed reports of his condition." Sharon was speaking at Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Earlier Thursday, French media outlets Proche Orient Info, a newspaper that covers the Middle East, and Radio Monte-Carlo reported that Arafat was taken off a life support machine by his doctors at about 5:30 p.m.
PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and several Palestinian officials quickly denied the report, insisting that Arafat's condition remained "critical but stable."
"I have just spoken to the officials in Paris and they say the situation is still as it was," Qurei said. "He is still in the intensive care unit."
Muhammed Rashid, a top Arafat aide in Paris, said the reports about Arafat's death were "completely untrue." He added: "President Arafat is alive, he's in stable condition and he's not in a coma."
He claimed that Arafat had even smiled at French President Jacque Chirac, who visited him on Thursday afternoon. "But this does not mean that President Arafat is in good health and hat he would be able to return to work," he added. "President Arafat is sick and exhausted."
Under pressure from the Palestinians, a spokesperson for the Percy Military Hospital later announced that Arafat was not dead, but did not give his condition.
"Mr. Arafat is not dead," Christian Estripeau told hundreds of journalists waiting outside the hospital in a brief statement that lasted three minutes.
"The clinical situation following the first days after [Arafat's] admission has become more complicated. The patient's health requires appropriate treatment which necessitated his transfer during the afternoon of Wednesday, November 3, to a unit suitable for his pathology," Estripeau said.
The spokesman explained that the press briefing on Arafat's health has been formulated "with respect to the discretion demanded by his wife," Suha Arafat.
French television station LCI quoted an anonymous French medical source saying Arafat was in an "irreversible coma" and "intubated" - a process that involves threading a tube down the windpipe to the lungs, often to connect a respirator. The source said Arafat was taken into intensive care Wednesday night because he was unconscious. The source said Arafat was put on a respirator, and that he is not responding to the medication he is receiving.
"I don't think he stands a chance of getting up out of the coma," the source told French TV.
Earlier in the day, the PLO executive committee and the Fatah central council held a joint meeting in the Mukata compound to discuss the latest developments surrounding Arafat's condition. The meeting was attended by Qurei and former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, but no decisions were made.
Some Palestinian officials said Qurei had been entrusted with running the security and financial affairs of the PA. However, Fatah officials later denied the report in a move reflecting growing uncertainty among the top brass of the Palestinian leadership.
The commanders of the Palestinian security forces were also summoned to an urgent meeting in Ramallah Thursday night. Qurei and PA Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath are scheduled to travel to the Gaza Strip on Friday for talks with representatives of various Palestinian factions on the situation following the serious decline in Arafat's health.
Meanwhile, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called for a "collective leadership" that would fill the political vacuum left by Arafat's departure.
Arafat's personal physician, Ashraf al-Kurdi, said that at 6 p.m. (1700 GMT) Thursday he "phoned Paris and spoke with a person who is with him [Arafat] in the same room. That person told me that he is not dead, yet his condition is getting ever more complicated."
The Prime Minister of Luxemburg, Jean-Claude Juncker, Thursday evening said Arafat passed away. "Mr. Arafat died 15 minutes ago," Juncker told reporters as he arrived in Brussels for a summit of European leaders. A spokesman for Juncker retracted the statement hours later calling it a "misunderstanding." Prime minister Juncker "is withdrawing the statement. It was a misunderstanding. He has denied it," his spokesman Lucien Michels said in Brussels.
Can I have a little peril?
He's had in head in the pork barrel for years... courtesy the US State Dept.
Here is my Ode to Yasser:
Hey there Yasser its time to go!
Yasser said I don't think so....
Yeah its time for you to split!
He said I don't want to quit....
Back in Paris they said your dead!
He said they're not in my head....
Tell us why don't you want to leave?
He said you don't see what I see....
We said Yasser what is that??
He said I see the place where they're at!
We said what you talking about?
Yasser said you should have no doubt....
They're ancient and wrinkled and smell like sturgeon
Its 72 burned out toothless virgins!
French hospital official: Arafat's condition 'has not worsened'
Ee's just pining for.......... AKK AKK AK BUDDA BUDDA BUDDDA BLAM KABOOM
Whow knows, if she finds it John Kerry may marry her.
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