Arafat's wife adds to the confusion

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| Tuesday, November 9, 2004 12:20 AM CST | () comments

THE BALTIMORE SUN

By Todd Richissin

PARIS � Yasser Arafat is brain dead or conscious and speaking, slowly recovering his health or slowly sliding toward death.

But what was made clear Monday, in terms that could have been mistaken for pure comic theater if the implications were not so serious, is this: The immediate future of the Palestinian government, and by extension peace in the Middle East, is even more uncertain than Arafat's health.

The confusion over his medical condition reached new levels of absurdity Monday when his wife, Suha, took to the airwaves of Al-Jazeera. Screaming into a telephone while being interviewed at her husband's bedside, she insisted he was just fine, would be returning to Ramallah soon and that reports of his impending death were being exaggerated by power-hungry lieutenants.

"Let it be known to the honest Palestinian people that a bunch of those who want to inherit are coming to Paris," she said in Arabic in her first public comments since Arafat left his West Bank compound for France more than a week ago. "He is all right and he is going home."

The people coming to Paris she was referring to were Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who had announced they would travel to the suburban military hospital where Arafat is being treated to try to determine his true condition.

Unsure how to respond to Suha Arafat's tirade, the trip was canceled, then rescheduled hours later, and aides to the ailing chairman said they would try to persuade the French government and doctors to brief them, that French law giving his wife sole control of medical reports should be usurped given his status as Palestinian leader.

But as they scheduled meetings for Tuesday with French President Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister, Michel Barnier, it was still not clear whether they would be allowed to visit the bedside of Arafat.

A spokesman for the Percy Army Teaching Hospital, where Arafat is being treated, added to the murkiness, saying that Arafat's condition "compels us to restrict visitors."

Percy Army Teaching Hospital specializes in treating patients suffering burns and radiation exposure but which also has units for treating blood disorders. The 436-bed hospital, sleek and modern, is a whitish, low-rise building, one of several on a large compound surrounded by a stone wall. Police have closed roads leading to the hospital since shortly after Arafat's arrival.

Gen. Christian Estripeau, the hospital spokesman, said Arafat remained in intensive care.

Some aides to Arafat first reacted to Suha Arafat's tirade with an outburst of their own, threatening to leave Paris if they were so unwanted, but that plan seemed to dissolve quickly.

They were reduced to milling around the plush lobby of the Intercontinental Le Grand Hotel on Rue Scribe, near the Garnier Opera House, as they conferred in corners with each other and on cellular telephones to people unknown, breaking occasionally to gripe to reporters about Suha Arafat's behavior � careful to criticize the performance and not the performer.

But, they insisted, this first big test of their leadership in a post-Arafat world � potentially � was not a failure.

"We are on top of this and there is no confusion," insisted Mohammed Dahlan, the former security chief for Gaza and one of Arafat's possible successors, who nevertheless conceded in an interview that he was not certain of his leader's health or lack of it.

Dahlan continued, "What may look like confusion is actually a case of running up against a woman who thinks that because of her marriage an entire political cause is unimportant."

In a separate interview, Mohammed Rashid, Arafat's chief financial officer, took his own stab at explaining that the Palestinian leadership was firmly on top of things. He insisted that the canceled and rescheduled trips, the news vacuum over Arafat's health � filled by reports that varied from him being poisoned by Israelis to the point of no return to the miraculous opening of his eyes and instant full-awareness � was no indication that the road to a successor, if necessary, would be anything but smooth.

"What you are seeing is not about procedures, because we have procedures in place" for any transfer of power, Rashid insisted. "What we do not have in place are ways of dealing with an angry wife."

He would not discuss, though, anything to do with anything after Arafat's death, be it today or in 10 years, because, he said, now was not the time.

If Arafat is fine � and virtually nobody seems to believe that � his wife has apparently decided the best way to prove that is by forbidding doctors to issue any health reports other than the vaguest summaries that boil down to, "there is no change."

No change from what � an irreversible vegetative state, a temporary health blip or something in between � has been unclear because of the conflicting reports that have managed to trickle out.

Leila Shahid, the Palestinian envoy to France, had issued daily bulletins about his condition and on Friday said he was in a coma. She has not been heard from since, presumably silenced at the insistence of Suha Arafat.

Adding to the frustration over the close hold Suha Arafat has kept over her husband's medical reports is years of history. She lives in Paris with their 9-year-old daughter, had not seen her husband in four years until his emergency evacuation here, has been openly critical of his lieutenants for years and is believed to receive a large monthly stipend from the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Beyond that, some Palestinian officials are concerned about chaos and potential violence should Arafat die, and they are frustrated that their ability to manage the situation is being compromised because not even they know what, exactly, they are trying to manage.

"This is not a family affair, this is a national affair," Rashid said. "Security relies on us knowing what is happening. "God forbid that death comes about, but if it does we should know that it is coming."

Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service

THE MYSTERY

What's happening: Top Palestinian lieutenants Ahmed Qureia and Mamhoud Abbas flew to France in hopes of seeing ailing leader Yasser Arafat; the hospital says his visitors must be restricted. It's unclear whether that excludes Qureia and Abbas.

What his wife says: "I tell you they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive," Suha Arafat says, referring to her 75-year-old husband by his nom de guerre.

How he is: In intensive care. No diagnosis has been disclosed.

� The Associated Press