Daily Press

Palestinian officials say the leader's condition has worsened and that funeral plans are underway.

Senior Palestinian officials, after consulting with doctors treating Yasser Arafat and visiting his hospital, said yesterday his condition had deteriorated dramatically, and acknowledged for the first time that preparations were underway for his funeral and burial.

Arafat, in a coma since Wednesday, slipped deeper into unconsciousness early yesterday but reports that he is brain-dead are untrue, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath told a news conference here.

Shaath said Arafat was on a respirator and being fed intravenously. He said that if the equipment were to be removed, Arafat would have "difficulty," but Shaath shied away from saying machines were keeping him alive.

"His brain, his heart and his lungs are still functioning and he is alive," Shaath said after visiting the hospital southeast of Paris where Arafat has been treated since Oct. 29. "He will live or die depending on his body's ability to resist and the will of God."

Arafat's true condition had been shrouded in secrecy because his wife, Suha, relied on French privacy statutes to prevent doctors from discussing his health.

The report on his health yesterday, while more detailed than those in the past, was most notable not because of what was said but because of who said it. For days, Arafat's most senior aides complained that their efforts to arrange for a possible transition of power were being thwarted because of the uncertainty about his condition.

But Monday, a day after Suha Arafat accused her husband's aides of trying to "bury" her husband alive, she apparently relented, allowing four Palestinian officials to meet with his doctors. *

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