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Arafat's wife opposes leaders visiting him
Yasser Arafat's senior deputies hoped to travel to France on Monday to meet the critically ill Palestinian president but his wife was opposed to the visit, a senior Palestinian official said.
Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary General Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie and Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath were to visit Arafat at a military hospital outside Paris after approving a law and order plan for the West Bank and Gaza.
But Arafat's wife Suha, who has kept tight control over access to and information about her 75-year-old husband, had objected to the visit, said the official, declining to be named.
"Suha does not want the Palestinian leaders to come to visit Arafat," he said. "Talks are going on and it's not clear when the leaders will come to Paris."
Suha Arafat could not be reached for comment.
Arafat's close circle has been concerned that fears about his health might increase chaos back home. Others fear a power struggle among Palestinians locked in a 4-year-old uprising against Israel.
Arafat, who was flown from his West Bank headquarters to Paris on Oct. 29, was suffering from liver failure and his health was not improving, a Palestinian official said on Sunday.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier described Arafat's condition as "very complex, very serious and stable at the time we are speaking."
News of the planned visit by his deputies fueled speculation in Israel on Sunday that Arafat's end was near.
The Internet site of Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, said Israeli police and army officers held talks on the security implications of the death of Arafat, symbol for decades of the Palestinian struggle against Israel for a state.
"The working assumption in Israel is that Arafat will be disconnected from medical equipment on Tuesday," the paper quoted an unidentified senior Israeli police officer as saying.
Abbas and Qurie, overseeing the Palestinian Authority in Arafat's absence, wanted to go to Paris to learn the facts about his condition, another Palestinian official said.
Israeli commentators called the visit a symbolic show of steady leadership by two members of Arafat's "old guard" and a necessary precursor to any announcement of his death.
Looking ahead to life without Arafat, his subordinates in the West Bank decided to carry out a plan to restore law and order to the Palestinian territories.
It was the first major decision they had announced since Arafat left.
Officials in Ramallah said the plan, drafted in March, was concerned more with ending local lawlessness than reining in militants waging the 4-year-old uprising -- a long-standing Israeli and international demand.
Calling for more security forces to be deployed, the plan also bans militants from carrying arms except when confronting Israel and from intervening in local disturbances. Israel has said Palestinian failure to curb anti-Israeli violence was one of the main reasons for its decision to carry out a unilateral withdrawal of settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. The evacuation, scheduled for 2005, is seen by Palestinians as a ruse aimed at cementing Israel's hold on larger settlement blocs in the West Bank. Addressing the delicate issue of where Arafat should be buried if he dies, Israel said it had completed preparations for his eventual burial in the Gaza Strip. Arafat wants to be buried in Jerusalem's Old City, which is holy both to Muslims and Jews. But Israel refuses to let Arafat lie in annexed land it calls part of its indivisible capital. |
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