Palestinians grapple with future as Arafat enters coma

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RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat battled for his life yesterday after slipping into a coma at a military hospital outside of Paris.

"President Arafat does not have cardiac arrest or heart failure," said Ashraf al-Kurdi, Mr. Arafat's Jordanian doctor.

"He is still alive. He is not clinically dead. There is no brain death, but his condition is deteriorating."

A senior Palestinian official told Reuters news agency:

"President Arafat is in very serious condition. He is still in a coma. The sense people are getting is that they are increasingly pessimistic."

In Paris and in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Mr. Arafat has lived under virtual house arrest for more than two years, Palestinian officials denied early reports of Mr. Arafat's death.

But the inconsistencies in their descriptions of his condition only stoked speculation that the prognosis for the Palestinian leader's recovery was increasingly bleak.

The 75-year-old leader, who embodies the Palestinian struggle for statehood, is being treated for a blood disorder that doctors have been unable to diagnose more specifically.

Mr. Arafat was moved into an intensive care unit on Wednesday, triggering the snowballing confusion about his condition. He was flown to the hospital outside Paris on Oct. 29.

Palestinian officials held a series of meetings in Ramallah in an apparent effort to set up a transitional government that would fill the power vacuum left by Mr. Arafat, who dominated the Palestinian struggle against Israel for four decades.