http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6717061


Palestinian President Yasser Arafat went into a coma overnight and was lying unconscious in a French military hospital on Thursday while back home Palestinian security chiefs were called to an emergency meeting.

Doctors carrying out tests on the 75-year-old leader since he was airlifted to France last Friday still did not know what was wrong with him, despite ruling out leukemia, they said.

Arafat's immune system appeared quite weak as his health, which had at first stabilized after he arrived at the hospital, suddenly deteriorated on Wednesday, they said.

"Arafat is in a coma and in a critical condition," a senior Palestinian official told Reuters. He was transferred to the intensive care unit on Wednesday at around 5 p.m. (1600 GMT).

"He has no immunity whatsoever," said another aide, adding he slipped into the coma around 2 a.m. (0100 GMT) on Thursday.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, the heads of all Palestinian security services were due to hold an emergency meeting, security sources said.

The meeting was to be held in the evening at Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, the sources told Reuters.

Senior Palestinian officials had earlier denied Arafat was in a coma. "No coma," Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie told reporters. "His condition is not getting better, nor is it worsening."

Arafat's slide into illness has raised fears of chaos among Palestinians locked in a 4-year-old uprising.

Arafat, loved by most Palestinians and reviled by many Israelis, has named no successor since emerging from exile under interim peace accords with Israel in the early 1990s.

The death of a leader Israel and Washington see as an obstacle to peace could also shuffle the cards in the Middle East conflict.