Doctors try to save Arafat; Palestinians brace for unrest

A Palestinian envoy said Arafat is at a critical point.
CLAMART, France (AP) -- Doctors fought to keep Yasser Arafat alive as anxious Palestinian officials looked for ways to prevent unrest if their 75-year-old leader, said today to be in a coma, dies.
A swirl of reports saying Arafat had died Thursday were quashed by doctors at the French military hospital where he has been treated since being airlifted to France last week. Arafat's aides, however, acknowledged his condition was very serious.
Israel's Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said today that Arafat was being kept alive artificially, but the source of his information was not clear.
"We all know that clinically he's dead but we won't interfere with internal Palestinian affairs. They'll announce his death when they find it proper," he told Associated Press Television News.
A Palestinian spokeswoman denied Lapid's assertion.
'In a coma'
"He is in a coma. We don't know the type but it's a reversible coma," Leila Shahid, the Palestinian envoy to France, told French RTL radio.
Shahid suggested the coma occurred after Arafat was put under anesthesia for medical tests including an endoscopy, colonoscopy and a biopsy of the spinal cord. She said doctors do not yet have a diagnosis.
"Today we can say that, given his condition and age, he is at a critical point between life and death," she said. "All vital organs are functioning. This is why all the doctors say that he could or could not wake up."
Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia received greater authority to deal with urgent financial matters, said PLO executive committee member Qais Abdel Karim. Palestinian leaders huddled all day Thursday in urgent meetings.
Vigil
Outside the hospital, some 50 well-wishers held a vigil into the early morning hours today. Some held candles, others Arafat portraits; a large Palestinian flag hung from the hospital's outer wall.
"It tears your heart up," said Mahmod Nimr, 36, an unemployed Palestinian by the main gate of the hospital. "I can't see someone taking his place."
On a day of high drama, there were persistent and contradictory reports about Arafat's condition. Luxembourg's prime minister announced at a summit of European leaders in Brussels Thursday that Arafat had died, but his spokesman later said it had been a "misunderstanding."
Shahid's comments echo those of a Palestinian official in Gaza who is close to Arafat's wife, Suha. He told The Associated Press on Thursday that Suha Arafat told him her husband became unconscious after receiving a strong anesthetic for a biopsy. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, quoted her as saying Arafat was recovering.
Doctors have determined Arafat does not have stomach cancer, Shahid said. Earlier this week, hospital officials said initial tests had ruled out leukemia.
'No brain death'
Contradicting reports that Arafat was brain dead, the Palestinian leader's personal physician, Dr. Ashraf Kurdi, said a brain scan showed Arafat had not suffered a hemorrhage or stroke, and "has no type of brain death."
Brain death occurs when the brain stops working, making it impossible for the body to maintain its own vital functions. It is irreversible, though patients can sometimes be kept alive by machines.
French television station LCI quoted an anonymous French medical official as saying Arafat was in an "irreversible coma" and "intubated" -- a process that involves threading a tube down the windpipe to the lungs to connect it to a life-support machine to help the patient breathe.
To be on life support, a patient must be unconscious, but not necessarily brain dead or even in a coma.
Palestinian leaders held an emergency meeting in the West Bank, and Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said top officials were in touch with Arafat's hospital every 30 minutes.