PLO says business as usual while Arafat in hospital

11.50am

RAMALLAH - Palestinian leaders, leaving an empty chair for ailing Yasser Arafat, have put on a display of unity insisting they were conducting business as usual despite his hospitalisation in France.

"We are in touch with the president and still receiving his instructions as he is head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation," PLO acting chairman and ex-Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said after the meeting of the PLO executive committee.

But Israel's Channel 10 television, which reported last week that Arafat's condition was far more serious than the flu Palestinian officials insisted he had contracted, said the 75-year-old leader was unable to communicate coherently.

Fears that a power vacuum could emerge in Arafat's absence led Palestinian leaders to delegate his powers temporarily to two deputies -- Abbas, his number two in the PLO, and Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie.

The PLO executive committee, meeting without Arafat for the first time in decades, assembled at his battered headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah a day after his departure.

Abbas said all Palestinian institutions would operate as usual despite Arafat's absence. "The PLO will continue to work collectively to make sure the rule of law is respected," he said.

Lawlessness and chaos have increased in the Palestinian territories in recent months, marked by the kidnapping of security officials and street battles between rival factions.

There was also fresh Israeli-Palestinian violence. Soldiers searching for militants in the West Bank town of Jenin shot dead a 12-year-old Palestinian boy and wounded three other boys, including another 12-year-old who was shot in the head.

Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said that governing bodies would consult Arafat "until his recovery and (his) coming to resume his duties."

Arafat, effectively confined to his Ramallah offices by Israeli forces for the past 2-1/2 years, agreed to fly to France only after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised he could return to the West Bank after treatment.

Israel had previously said that if Arafat travelled abroad it could not guarantee he would be allowed back.

Arafat underwent a battery of medical tests at a military hospital in a Paris suburb on Saturday, and Leila Shahid, the Palestinian envoy to Paris, said the tests "exclude any possibility of leukaemia".

Arafat was "much better both physically and psychologically", she said, adding that the doctors were still trying to work out what was wrong with him. There has been no official comment by Arafat's doctors.

- REUTERS