World News 05-11-2004 Arafat Close To Death who: Yasser Arafat what: In a coma as health deteriorates further where: Paris when: Yesterday snippet: "Yasser Arafat was dangerously ill in intensive care in Paris last night," says The Independent`s Donald Macintyre, "after a bizarre and, at times, macabre day in which French medics were obliged to deny announcements by the media - and a European prime minister - that he was already clinically dead." Yesterday, Mr Arafat`s chief aide, Ramzi Khoury, described him as being in a "grave condition," says The Guardian. Ashraf al-Kurdi, Mr Arafat`s Jordanian doctor, told the press that the president`s condition was "deteriorating" and that his condition had not yet been diagnosed. In the afternoon, the 75 year-old was visited at the Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart outside Paris by French president Jacques Chirac. Meanwhile, Israeli justice minister Yosef Lapid "told Israel`s Channel Two television that Mr Arafat was brain dead and being `artificially` kept alive," says the BBC. This report apparently led to a comment by Jean Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, who said he had been told Mr Arafat had "passed away 15 minutes ago," a remark he later retracted. "Mr Arafat`s wife, Suha, asked the hospital to issue a statement clarifying that her husband was still alive," says The Guardian and this morning the BBC is reporting claims by Leila Shahid, Palestinian envoy to France, that Mr Arafat`s coma is "reversible" and he is definitely not brain dead. [... more]

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