Palestinian PM wants French medical report on Arafat's death

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureias on Monday asked for a full report on Yasser Arafat's death in a Paris hospital last week, challenging French laws under which his widow has maintained a veil of secrecy.

Palestinian militants have accused Israel of poisoning Arafat, a charge denied by Israeli and French officials but which threatens to fuel discontent in the West Bank and Gaza and complicate the succession process.

Qureia asked the French government for the "full medical report into the death of President Arafat and the reasons for his death," said a statement from the Palestinian leadership Monday.

But French Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said late Monday that France had not yet received a formal request. "As soon as we receive one, we will examine it fully," he said.

"We do not want to jump to conclusions. We only want to have the medical report, though we trust the French doctors and the French government," Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior figure in the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Reuters after his government sent a request to Paris.

"The report will give us a clear picture of the cause of death," he said.

French doctors are bound by privacy laws invoked by Arafat's widow Suha which prevent them from releasing details. She could not immediately be reached for comment.

Arafat, 75, was flown from his Ramallah headquarters to Paris on October 29 with stomach pains, diarrhoea and vomiting. He had blood and urine tests that ruled out an initial suspicion of leukemia.

Aides said Arafat died on November 11 after going into a coma and suffering a brain hemorrhage. But they did not say what illness caused this.

"We know what it is not," Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Sha'ath said last Tuesday.

French Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said Sunday there was no indication Arafat was poisoned, although he had no access to medical files on the death of the Palestinian leader.

"Nothing in the medical dossier, it seems, has shown that he was poisoned," Douste-Blazy told Radio J. He stressed, however, he had not seen the dossier itself either in his capacity as a doctor or a minister.

The head of the Palestinian mission in Paris, Leila Shahid, said Saturday that poisoning was a possibility, although there was no evidence.

"It's quite possible that [the Israelis] poisoned him... I cannot say that medically we have proof of that," she told Europe 1 radio.

	Palestinian youths standing at a shrine to late PA leader Yasser Arafat in Nablus on Monday. (Reuters)