Concern mounts as Arafat's health deteriorates sharply

An ambulance and a team of doctors were summoned to Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah last night amid reports that the health of the Palestinian Authority president had sharply deteriorated.

An ambulance and a team of doctors were summoned to Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah last night amid reports that the health of the Palestinian Authority president had sharply deteriorated.

He has been ill for two weeks, with what was originally said by officials to have been a bout of stomach flu.

Today it was reported that Mr Arafat was seroiously ill and was due to be moved to Ramallah hospital. It was said earlier that he had performed prayers before dawn. The Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has agreed to allow Mr Arafat to be flown abroad for treatment if necessary.

The deterioration in Mr Arafat's health is bound to fuel intense speculation about the vacuum he would leave in the Palestinian leadership. Mr Arafat has consistently failed to name a successor.

Although Mr Arafat's spokesman Nabil Abu Iredeneh had insisted earlier that he was in good health, Palestinian Legislative Council sources said that a team of Egyptian doctors despatched by President Hosni Mubarak was hoping to visit the PLO chairman's bedside today.

Mr Arafat was visited yesterday evening by Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian Prime Minister, and his predecessor Abu Mazen, a long-time PLO comrade of Mr Arafat's, who fell out with him after resigning as premier in September last year.

The prominent PLC member Hanan Ashrawi said last night that there was no immediate crisis in Mr Arafat's health and that the visits by Palestinian politicians to Mr Arafat in the battered Mukata building - where he has been confined for the past three years - were not connected with any fears for his life.

The Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz gave permission on Monday for 75-year-old Mr Arafat to leave the compound for the Ramallah hospital - guaranteeing that he would be able to return - but Palestinian sources said the PA president had refused to leave.

One source said that there were tests that the hospital wanted to carry out on Mr Arafat, and the director of the hospital was said to be among the medical team which visited him yesterday.

On Tuesday, tests were carried out on Mr Arafat, which Palestinian sources said had shown that he did not have cancer.

The Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat insisted that he had seen Mr Arafat yesterday and that he was "still recovering from stomach flu''. The statement closely echoed one made earlier by the Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, who said that Mr Arafat was in pain because of serious "intestinal flu'', but that doctors who had been flown in from Egypt and Tunisia expected him to be feeling "much better in a few days''.

Palestinian sources said that Mr Arafat had been urged by doctors to break the Ramadan fast in order not to further endanger his health.

Mr Shaath said that the doctors had ruled out intestinal cancer.