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Was watching Bush's news conference and one of the reporters just said Arafat has passed away.
http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArti...toryID=6712740
Palestinian Leader Arafat in Coma -Aide
Thu Nov 4, 2004 05:26 AM ET
By Wafa Amr
PARIS (Reuters) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was in a coma and in critical condition in the intensive care unit at a French military hospital on Thursday after his health suddenly deteriorated, aides said.
They said doctors carrying out tests on the 75-year-old leader since he was airlifted to France last Friday still did not know what was wrong with him, despite ruling out leukemia.
"Arafat is in a coma and in a critical condition," a senior Palestinian official told Reuters. Aides had earlier said he was in serious condition in the unit where he was moved on Wednesday at around 5 p.m. (11 a.m. EST).
A briefing by the hospital had been expected at 11 a.m. (5 a.m. EST) but was put off without any explanation.
"New tests have been carried out including an endoscopy (visual internal examination). Nothing was found out from those tests," a senior aide said earlier on Thursday.
Arafat, for decades a symbol of the Palestinian struggle with Israel for a state, was rushed to France from the West Bank last Friday with severe stomach pains, diarrhea and vomiting.
Arafat's slide into illness has raised fears of chaos among Palestinians locked in a 4-year-old uprising, and the death of a leader Israel and Washington see as an obstacle to peace could shuffle the cards in the Middle East conflict.
The French doctors said on Tuesday that Arafat was responding to treatment although aides said the Palestinian leader could remain in the hospital in a southwestern Paris suburb for several more weeks.
The doctors did not immediately comment on Arafat's latest condition.
DOCTORS SEEK EXPLANATIONS
Leila Shahid, the Palestinian's permanent envoy to Paris, earlier said that there was a setback in Arafat's health and that doctors were trying to find out what had caused that.
"Obviously in his case, there could be setbacks at times and this is a setback," said Shahid. "(On Thursday), the doctors will give a very clear and direct explanation and report on what is happening."
Arafat, loved by most Palestinians and reviled by many Israelis, has named no successor since emerging from exile under interim peace accords with Israel in the early 1990s.
Aides have been keen to present Arafat as still in charge. He has temporarily delegated powers to two men -- Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader's number two in the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Palestinian officials said Farouq Kaddoumi, another senior PLO official, had arrived in Paris to see Arafat.
Earlier on Wednesday, Arafat had sent congratulations to President Bush on his re-election. Bush has backed the idea of a Palestinian state as part of a peace deal but has tried to shut Arafat out of Middle East decision making.
Both Washington and Israel accuse Arafat of fomenting violence in the uprising against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank that broke out in 2000, a charge he denies.
Until he was airlifted to France, Arafat had been effectively confined to his s -shattered Ramallah headquarters by Israeli forces for 2-1/2 years.
Was watching Bush's news conference and one of the reporters just said Arafat has passed away.
Yeah, but the French are denying it...
It'll take that er way too long to die.
Arafat can't die soon enough. Someone should have ended him a long time ago.
The Socialized French Health Care system(otherwise known as the Kerry system) will finish him off...trust me on this, it's in the bag and France is our best ally on this issue...whether they are trying to be or not.
Chriaq will no doubt be despondent at the loss of such a great terrorist...we might even get him to step down.
It's about time the French come around in the war on terror.
The only way this could get any better is if he keeled off before the PLO could get his Swiss account information from him.
Rarely is it good news when a public figure dies, but it's the best thing that can happen right now. He needs to die.
And it's probably fortunate that he was not killed as a result of an attack, if you think about it. Now he's not a martyr.
Actually they probably will still call him a martyr...since he was the leader of a movement. They do the same thing with their war heroes who go on to die of natural causes.
Kind of ironic he's going to die in a French hospital, when he had no problem sending teenagers to their deaths as "martyrs" in Israel.
We should have killed his ass after Munich.
Public figure? He's a terrorist thug...always has been.
Yassar Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.That always cracks me up.
I hear they're gonna bury him on a pig farm in Utah.
Did anyone know that Yasser Arafat applied for admission to the University of Texas prior to becoming a political extremist(and was rejected)?
After he got rejected he ended up attending a college, IIRC I believe in the mid-east, and becoming involved with the precursor to the PLO.
I've often wondered what might have happened had he been accepted and spent some time in a Western Nation during the years he formed his political ideology.
And I say political, not Islamic, because like Saddam, Arafat was a politician more than a true Islamist. ing Saddam was an athiest more than anything. Arafat just figured out the political power behind Islam long before Saddam did.
There was talk he was going to be a prof. in Austin.
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