Yasser Arafat

WASHINGTON - President Bush moved cautiously yesterday into the post-Yasser Arafat era of Middle East diplomacy, dispatching a modest delegation to the Palestinian leader's funeral and giving little sign of a strong U.S. peacemaking role in the near future. Despite Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's statement early this week that the United States is ready to move "actively" on an international peace plan, a senior U.S. official said yesterday that much would hinge on the capability of Arafat's successors.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinians embarked on a new, uncertain path yesterday with the swift, smooth swearing-in of new leadership after the death of Yasser Arafat. Rawi Fattouh, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, was sworn in as acting president of the Palestinian Authority, the government formerly led by Arafat, until elections are held within the next 60 days. Mahmoud Abbas, a former prime minister who advocated nonviolence, took Arafat's place as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- A fleet of trucks and bulldozers had lumbered into place yesterday afternoon, and aimed for a small grove of cypress trees, shoving aside the rusted remains of junked cars along the way. By dusk, most of the debris was cleared. The cypress trees still stood, on the edge of a concrete parking lot, in the shadow of the presidential compound. Sullen-faced members of the presidential guard sat slumped on a wall and watched. The workers were clearing space, in the sparse shade of the cypress trees -- for Yasser Arafat's grave.

WASHINGTON - Having come to despise Yasser Arafat toward the end of his life, the Bush administration was not about to praise him in death. In a statement last night, President Bush said, "The death of Yasser Arafat is a significant moment in Palestinian history," omitting any judgment on the Palestinian leader. "We express our condolences to the Palestinian people." "During the period of transition that is ahead, we urge all in the region and throughout the world to join in helping make progress toward these goals and toward the ultimate goal of peace."

Yasser Arafat, the leader and most famous symbol of Palestinian nationalism for nearly 40 years, died early today in a French military hospital near Paris. His death deprived Palestinians of the figure who led and shaped their long, often-violent campaign to obtain international recognition as a people and their quest to govern themselves in an independent state. Mr. Arafat, 75, died after suffering a brain hemorrhage and multiple organ failure, two weeks after falling seriously ill at his presidential compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

WASHINGTON - It is a sad but fitting coda to Yasser Arafat's career that the prospect of his death seemed to unlock more hope and possibilities than the reality of his life. His corrupt, self-interested rule had created a situation whereby Palestinian aspirations seemed to have gotten locked away with him, under house arrest in Ramallah, well beyond the reach of creative diplomacy. Only human biology could liberate them again - and so it has. In the early 1990s, I sided with those Israelis who, though no fans of Mr. Arafat, were ready to deal with him at Oslo in the name of normalcy for both Israelis and Palestinians.

JERUSALEM - The Palestinian officials trying to prepare for a smooth transfer of power before Yasser Arafat dies are having to make sense of a tangle of institutions created by and for Arafat and that may be unmanageable without him. Arafat officially is president of the Palestinian Authority, the quasi-Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He is also chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the one-time revolutionary body that has evolved into a large bureaucracy, and head of the PLO's dominant faction, Fatah, which functions as a political party often indistinguishable from the government.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's health apparently worsened yesterday in the French military hospital where he was being treated, amid conflicting reports as to whether he had lapsed into an irreversible coma and was near death. Palestinian officials tried to convey a sense of business as usual while urgently convening high-level meetings to prepare for a future without him. Minutes after Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia emerged from the government headquarters here to deny that Arafat was near death, Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, announced at a summit of the 25 European Union leaders in Brussels, Belgium, that Arafat had died.

The World Israel's parliament approved a plan to evacuate all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and several in the West Bank, the first time Israeli lawmakers have voted to relinquish land that Palestinians want for an independent state. The vote, 67-45 in favor of the withdrawal proposed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, came after 17 hours of often-harsh debate as thousands of protesters, pro and con, rallied outside the Parliament building, ringed by heavily armed police. An ailing Yasser Arafat - too weak to stand, unable to hold down food - agreed to leave his battered West Bank compound for the first time in more than two years and fly to Paris for urgent medical treatment.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Yasser Arafat left the West Bank early today in a Jordanian military helicopter on his way to Paris to be hospitalized for ailments that have left the Palestinian leader disoriented and unable to stand. Arafat's personal physician, Dr. Ashraf Kurdi, said last night that blood tests indicated a low platelet count, and that more sophisticated diagnostic tests could only be carried out at a well-equipped medical center. Arafat's illness seemed to begin as stomach flu but turned more serious Wednesday.