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By Wafa Amr
PARIS (Reuters) - Yasser Arafat was critically ill in a French military hospital on Friday after falling into a coma, and a senior official said some of the Palestinian president's powers had been handed to his prime minister. Aides said the condition of the 75-year-old leader, a decades-old symbol of the Palestinian struggle against Israel for a state, deteriorated on Thursday.
But the aides and a hospital spokesman denied reports he was dead. They also dismissed reports he was brain dead, although the exact nature of his illness remained unclear. "President Arafat is in a very serious condition," said one senior Palestinian official, declining to be named. "He is still in a coma. The sense people are getting is that they are increasingly pessimistic."
Dozens of Arafat supporters gathered in front of the hospital in the southwest Paris surburb of Clamart, waving flags and holding up pictures of the Palestinian leader. French President Jacques Chirac visited Arafat on Thursday afternoon. "If he's dying tonight, I will be here," one Palestinian supporter told French radio. "I like this man a lot."
Arafat's condition has raised fears of chaos among Palestinians locked in a 4-year-old uprising against Israel. Security had been boosted at Jewish settlements in the West Bank for fear of mass violence against them, Israeli TV said.
FORMER GUERRILLA
The death of a Palestinian leader Israel and Washington see as an obstacle to peace could reshuffle the cards in the Middle East conflict. The former guerrilla is loved by most Palestinians and reviled by many Israelis. A senior Palestinian official said Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, a leading moderate, had taken over some of Arafat's powers for security and financing.
Arafat has not named a successor and had earlier been reluctant to cede any powers. Palestinian security services held an emergency meeting late on Thursday at Arafat's shell-battered headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, security sources said.
President Bush, responding to the reports about Arafat's death, said: "God bless his soul." "We will continue to work for a free Palestinian state that's at peace with Israel," he said. While Bush has backed the idea of a Palestinian state as part of a peace deal, he has tried to shut Arafat out of the Middle East picture.
Both Washington and Israel accuse Arafat of fomenting violence against Israel, a charge he denies. The Palestinians want Gaza and the West Bank -- territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war -- for a state.
Arafat's condition has also stirred speculation about where he could be buried if he died. Israeli and Palestinian political sources have said Arafat would probably be laid to rest in the Gaza Strip because Israel refuses the Palestinian president a grave in Jerusalem.
Throughout Thursday, Palestinian officials issued conflicting reports and at one point Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker announced Arafat had died. He later retracted his statement.
Doctors carrying out tests on Arafat since he was airlifted to France last Friday have ruled out leukemia, but still did not know what was wrong with him, aides said. He was transferred to the intensive care unit on Wednesday.
"He has no immunity whatsoever," one aide said, adding Arafat had slipped into the coma around 2 a.m. (2000 EST) on Thursday. Arafat, short, stubble-bearded and usually seen in his trademark black-and-white Arab headdress, was rushed to France last Friday suffering from severe stomach pains, diarrhea and vomiting.
Until he was airlifted to France, Arafat had been effectively confined to his shell-shattered Ramallah headquarters by Israeli forces for 2-1/2 years.
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