Arafat aides' visit to go ahead
Ramallah (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Senior Palestinian officials have said they will travel to France on Monday to visit ailing Yasser Arafat in hospital. The move reverses an earlier announcement that the trip had been cancelled.
Palestinian leaders abruptly cancelled a trip to Paris early on Monday to check on the condition of ailing leader Yasser Arafat after critical comments by Arafat's wife, a Palestinian official said Monday. Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior Arafat aide, also said that the critical comments by Suha Arafat "don't represent our people." Rahim spoke after Mrs. Arafat lashed out at Arafat's lieutenant in a radio interview, accusing them of travelling to Paris with plans to bury their leader "alive."
Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, PLO Secretary General Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath were due in Paris.
In what she called "an appeal to the Palestinian people," broadcast live by the Al-Jazeera arab network, Suha Arafat accused Palestinian officials on their way to Paris of conspiring to usurp the role her husband has held for four decades as Palestinian leader. "Let it be known to the honest Palestinian people that a bunch of those who want to inherit are coming to Paris," she screamed in Arabic over the telephone. "You have to realize the size of the conspiracy. I tell you they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive," she continued, using Arafat's nom de guerre. "He is all right and he is going home. God is great."
She said she was calling from Arafat's bedside at the French military hospital where he has been in intensive care since last Wednesday. Suha Arafat, who lives in Paris, has not been to the West
Bank or seen her husband since the latest round of Palestinian violence began in 2000.
She also is widely believed to have control of vast funds collected by the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization).
Suha Arafat, has controlled the flow of information over his illness and has kept all but a
handful of Palestinians away from his bedside arousing resentment back home. "She is not part of the Palestinian leadership," Arafat security adviser Jibril Rajoub told Israel's Channel Two TV on Sunday.
The decision to send the delegation came after Mohammed Dahlan, a former Gaza security chief who accompanied Arafat to France last week for treatment, returned to the West Bank with a message from Arafat's inner circle. "With God's will, his medical condition is better than
Before," Dahlan said. "I don't have anything new to add about his condition, but in his condition he needs the political leadership to be near him."
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09/06/2018 09:05
