Arafat stays in coma as row looms over burial site

10.30am

PARIS - Yasser Arafat remained in a coma today as a row brewed over where he would be buried and questions loomed about who might succeed him.

A spokesman for the French military hospital treating the Palestinian president said in the evening Arafat's condition had been stable for the past 24 hours, declaring: "The state of health of President Yasser Arafat has not got worse."

Palestinian envoy to Paris Leila Shahid denied Arafat, 75, was brain dead. She said he was in a reversible coma and "at a critical juncture between life and death." Other Arafat aides said he was on a respirator and in a critical condition.

"The French medical team is taking care of him and he will not be moved anywhere. The doctors are trying to find out what is wrong with the president," said an aide, Mohammad Rashid, dismissing suggestions he might be flown home to die there.

In the Gaza Strip, 14 Palestinian factions met in a show of unity meant to avoid strife in a possible power vacuum. In Brussels, worried European Union leaders said peace efforts must go on whether or not Arafat survives.

Arafat, who symbolizes the struggle for a Palestinian state, slipped into a coma on Thursday and has spent a week in the hospital near Paris.

He has not named a successor and his illness has raised fears of chaos among Palestinians waging a four-year-old uprising against Israel.

Some of Arafat's powers, over security and financing, have been handed to Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, a leading moderate.

ROW OVER BURIAL ARRANGEMENTS

Palestinian officials refused to discuss funeral preparations openly, but Arafat has said he wanted to be buried in Jerusalem. Israel wants Arafat, admired by Palestinians but reviled by many Israelis, to be buried in the Gaza Strip.

"Jerusalem is a city where Jews bury their kings. It's not a city where we want to bury an Arab terrorist, a mass murderer," Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid told Channel 10 television.

The 14 Islamic and secular Palestinian groups which have waged the uprising against Israel put up a united front at a meeting in Gaza.

"We are people looking for freedom, not fighting tribes," said senior Islamic Jihad official Mohammed al-Hindi, who emerged from hiding for the meeting. "We have demanded the formation of a unified national leadership."

In the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians were glued to radio and television broadcasts.

"Unless a successor is more determined and steadfast on the fundamental Palestinian rights, he will never be trusted by the people," said 30-year-old Khaled Ammar at a Gaza mosque.

But the EU underlined the need to press on with peace moves with or without Arafat. "Europe will continue to make every possible effort to ensure that the Palestinian state becomes a reality," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said.

President Bush has backed the idea of a Palestinian state as part of a peace deal with Israel, but has tried to shut Arafat out.

The death of a man Israel and Washington see as an obstacle to peace could alter the dynamics of the Middle East conflict.

Washington and Israel accuse Arafat of fomenting violence against the Jewish state, a charge he has denied. The Palestinians want Gaza and the West Bank - territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war - for a state.

- REUTERS