Confusion over Arafat's fate, Palestinians prepare burial

4.00pm

PARIS - Palestinians looked to their leadership to lift confusion over Yasser Arafat's fate in a French hospital on Wednesday as preparations gathered pace to bury the icon of the fight for a state.

Arafat, 75, suffered a brain haemorrhage on Tuesday at the hospital where he was flown from the West Bank on Oct. 29 and had lain in a coma. Officials insisted in public that he was alive, though aides said privately that he was dead.

In four decades leading the Palestinian nationalist cause, Arafat has gone from guerrilla to Nobel prize-winning peacemaker to a shunned old leader facing renewed bloodshed with Israel.

His dream of a Palestinian state remains unrealised, a possible succession battle is brewing and the threat of chaos in Palestinian territories is looming.

He has been widely admired by Palestinians as the father of their struggle for statehood but was reviled by many Israelis as the face of terror.

Nonetheless, both sides have wondered whether his death might serve as the catalyst for the first real peace effort in years or plunge the region into deeper crisis.

Palestinian sources said leaders were awaiting a senior Muslim cleric to give the go-ahead to disconnect life-support machines at the military hospital in Paris where Arafat lapsed into a coma last week.

"Is he dead or not dead?" said Ali Zaituna in the Gaza Strip. "We will only believe it when a Palestinian official appears and says it."

LEADERS RETURN HOME

A delegation of three senior leaders returned to the West Bank from Paris early on Wednesday ahead of an expected announcement after 9am GMT (10pm NZ time) on Arafat's condition and plans for the future.

Officials said it was likely that a funeral would be held in Cairo followed by a burial in Ramallah at the shell-battered "Muqata" compound where Arafat had been effectively confined by Israeli troops for 2-1/2 years.

After ruling out the burial in the holy city of Jerusalem that Arafat wanted, Israeli officials had said they wanted him interred in the Gaza Strip. But political sources said they might lift objections to Ramallah.

Workers installed extra communications links at the Muqata to be able to beam pictures worldwide.

"We are not sure about the day of burial, but I was told most likely on Friday," said one Palestinian official who did not want to be named. "The body might be flown to Egypt on Thursday."

Despite his reputation as a consummate survivor, Arafat's decline came swiftly and with little warning.

Initial claims that he was suffering from a stomach ailment soon gave way to widespread reports that he had slipped into a coma and that his organs were failing.

French doctors kept a tight lid on details of Arafat's condition at the behest of his wife, Suha, who engaged in a war of words with senior Palestinians officials over her virtual monopoly on information from his hospital bedside.

Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie saw Arafat on Tuesday. The other members of the delegation, Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath and Palestine Liberation Organisation Secretary General Mahmoud Abbas, were unable to.

Most of Arafat's powers have been take over by Qurie and Abbas, both leading moderates. Arafat's death would call for parliament speaker Rawhi Fattouh to assume the presidency in a caretaker capacity for 60 days until elections could be held.

- REUTERS