FRANCE: Doctors treating Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, have said it will take three days to make a diagnosis, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris.
Mr Arafat reached the haematology unit of the Percy Army Teaching Hospital at Clamart, south-west of Paris, early yesterday afternoon. After visiting him, Leila Shahid, the Palestinian ambassador to France, said he was exhausted by a two-week bout of intestinal flu.
One of Mr Arafat's doctors said earlier that he was suffering from "a viral infection, cancer or blood poisoning". He reportedly suffers from a disorder in which white blood cells are destroying blood platelets needed for clotting, and he may need a transfusion.
The Palestinian leader left Ramallah in a Jordanian military helicopter before dawn. "We will sacrifice our blood and soul for you," his supporters chanted as he departed, adding one of Arafat's favourite sayings: "Wind cannot shake mountains."
A French Falcon 50 jet waited for Mr Arafat on the tarmac at Marqa airport in Amman. Dressed in a dark-green military overcoat and a Russian-style grey fur cap, the frail 75-year-old walked to the aircraft, aides propping him up by the elbows.
Before taking off, he threw kisses at the crowd and promised, "I will be back soon, God willing." But when the cameras next caught sight of him, there were no smiles or kisses, only a human form strapped to a stretcher, being wheeled across the roof of Percy Hospital.
Dressed in black, Mr Arafat's wife, Suha, appeared to to have taken charge, instructing the orderlies who pushed her husband's trolley.
She lives in Paris with the couple's nine-year-old daughter Zahwa, who was named after Mr Arafat's mother.
Outside the hospital gate, well-wishers held bouquets and the green, red, black and white Palestinian flag.
Eighty policemen deployed to guard the hospital were outnumbered by journalists.
President Jacques Chirac personally decided to invite Mr Arafat to France, minutes after receiving a request from the Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Ahmed Qurei, on Thursday afternoon.
Since Charles de Gaulle was president in the 1960s, France's policy of supporting Palestinian self-determination, along with Israel's right to exist within secure borders, has never varied.
The late president François Mitterrand sent the French navy to save Arafat from Israeli troops in Beirut in 1982, and again from Syrian forces in northern Lebanon the following year. Four years before Mr Arafat was received at the White House, Mr Mitterrand was criticised for inviting him to the Élysée.
In 1997, during one of his many calls on Mr Chirac, Mr Arafat joked that when he had a problem he "went to see Doctor Chirac". Paris has defied attempts by the Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon to isolate Mr Arafat. When Mr Sharon's government refused to allow the French Foreign Minister, Michel Barnier, to see Arafat in Ramallah last June, Mr Barnier cancelled his trip to Israel.
The Élysée made public a letter from Mr Chirac to Mr Arafat expressing "my deepest sympathy and warmest wishes for your recovery". France, the president wrote, "backs the aspiration you embody for the creation of a viable, prosperous and peaceful Palestinian state".
In Rome yesterday, Mr Chirac said: "It was natural that France, a land of refuge, would not question the right of the president of the Palestinian Authority to come for medical treatment in our country." But Mr Chirac's generous spirit was not universal. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that although Mr Arafat wants to be buried near the al Aksa mosque in Jerusalem, the Israeli government has chosen possible graves for him in Abu Dis, on the outskirts of east Jerusalem, or in Gaza.
When the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, George Habash, came to Paris for medical care 12 years ago, Jewish groups protested so vociferously that high-ranking French officials were forced to resign as a result.
Several French Jewish families who emigrated to Israel yesterday filed a lawsuit against Mr Arafat because they lost relatives in suicide bombings.
A parliamentarian, Mr Lionel Luca, issued a statement saying that "the Palestinian leader is the embodiment of innocent victims killed by terrorism throughout the world."
"I don't see why we don't welcome bin Laden for medical care," Mr Luca said sarcastically in a telephone interview. He particularly objected to what he called "the official welcome" given by media to Mr Arafat.
Mr Luca is a member of the France-Israel friendship group in the National Assembly.