Arafat to convalesce in Tunisia

2004-11-03 23:46

Tunis - Ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will convalesce in Tunisia after undergoing medical treatment in France, Palestinian foreign minister Farouk Kaddoumi said on Wednesday.

"After undergoing treatment he will need time to rest," Kaddoumi said before leaving for Paris in the company of other Palestinian leaders.

"He will be here in Tunis, soon, God willing."

Kaddoumi would not be drawn on whether Arafat, who is suffering from a blood disorder, had been poisoned.

"The medical reports which will be published tomorrow (on Thursday) will give us an explanation of his condition," he said.

The permanent Palestinian envoy in France, Leila Shahid, had on Monday ruled out any poisoning of the 75-year-old leader saying that any such speculations were "not serious".

Kaddoumi said that Arafat's condition was stable but added that he still needed medical treatment and tests to find out what caused his illness.

On Tuesday, the first medical bulletin issued by French doctors confirmed that Arafat was not suffering from leukaemia, although it failed to suggest any new hypothesis to explain his blood disorder.

Instead, tests have shown anomalies in his digestive functions.

Arafat was air-lifted to a military hospital outside Paris from his Ramallah headquarters in the West Bank on Friday.

It was the first time in three years that he left Palestinian territory.

Arafat lived in exile in Tunis for 12 years, where the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation were located between 1982 and 1994.

His wife Suha and their daughter have lived in Paris and Tunis since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000.

- SAPA