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Arafat's Condition Still Uncertain

AFP (dc)November 9, 2004

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is very ill, but his heart, lungs and brain still work, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath told a press conference in Paris on Tuesday. Earlier reports said he was already dead.

https://p.dw.com/p/5pmI
A makeshift shrine is taking shape outside Arafat's hospitalImage: AP

Shaath said the doctors treating Arafat at the Percy military hospital on the outskirts of Paris had ruled out that the 75-year-old leader was suffering from cancer or poisoning.

He explained that for the past three and a half years when Arafat had been besieged in his Ramallah headquarters he had been suffering from "a variety of digestive tract ailments."

"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," Shaath explained.

The Palestinian foreign minister said this had caused a "chain reaction" for Arafat's state of health which "built over time to put him into coma and then into a deeper coma as he is today."

Palestinian sources sow confusion

Shaath said he wanted to end all the speculation and rumours that have been flying since Arafat was flown to France for emergency treatment on Oct. 29, leaving Ramallah for the first time in more than three years.

Earlier in the day Palestinian sources had again sown confusion by announcing that the veteran leader, the symbol of the Palestinians' struggle for statehood, had died.

Denying those comments, Shaath also added that euthanasia would not be used to end Arafat's suffering as he lies in a coma in the hospital, with his wife Suha by his side.

"I want to rule out any question of euthanasia" to bring Arafat's life to an end, Shaath said.

"People talk as if his life can be plugged in or plugged out. This is ridiculous. We Muslims do not allow euthanasia," he said. "He will live or die depending on his body's ability to resist and on the will of God," he said.