Top delegation to visit Arafat

2004-11-07 22:01

Paris - Three Palestinian leaders including acting Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Mahmud Abbas and Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei are expected to arrive on Monday in Paris to visit Yasser Arafat in a French hospital.

"Tomorrow Abu Mazen (Abbas), Abu Alaa (Qorei) and (foreign minister) Nabil Shaath are coming to Paris to visit their chief, Yasser Arafat, and I will received them tomorrow afternoon to continue dialog with them, a frank dialog," said French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier.

Arafat, who was rushed to a French military hospital outside Paris on October 29, lapsed into a coma on Wednesday.

Barnier said that Arafat is in a serious but stable condition.

"Yasser Arafat is receiving treatment, good treatment in France, in line with the wishes of his friends and family. He is alive, in a very serious, stable condition," said the foreign minister.

A spokesperson for the medical service of the French army said on Sunday that Arafat's condition remained unchanged in the military hospital on the southwestern outskirts of Paris.

First hand info

A member of the PLO executive committee said that Qorei and Abbas were making the trip as they were frustrated at the lack of information on the state of Arafat's health.

Only Arafat's wife Suha, his nephew Nasser Al-Qidwa and the Palestinian envoy to France Leila Shahid have been allowed to visit him to date.

"All the information they are receiving is from Suha and they want to see the situation with their own eyes," the PLO source said.

Barnier said he would give the three Palestinian leaders the same message he conveyed to Arafat during a June meeting, that quick reform of the Palestinian Authority was urgent.

French doctors have been unable to diagnose Arafat's illness, other than to rule out leukaemia.

Barnier trashed talk that Arafat had been poisoned, saying "there is nothing to justify to say such a hypothesis is valid."

- AFP