Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat can walk, eat and talk with others, his entourage affirmed in Paris Tuesday, while the first medical report ruled out his possible leukemia.  

"The first tests ... have allowed us to eliminate the leukemia hypothesis," Palestinian representative in France Leila Shahid told journalists Tuesday.

According to the report, Arafat had a high level of white corpuscles in his blood and a low level of platelets and some "certain anomalies notably in his digestive functions."

But Shahid said: "in the last 72 hours his general state has improved."

Palestinian officials expressed earlier in the day optimism about Arafat's health, which is reported to be generally improving, and said he had talked with some heads of state and was following the US election with close attention, French LCI television reported.

According to his economic adviser Mohamed Rashid, Arafat had since Monday talked on telephone with King of Jordan Abdallah and received calls from President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Crown Prince Abdallah of Saudi Arabia and the senior Palestinian figures Ahmed Qurei and Mahmud Abbas.

He is also following in the sickbed the ongoing US presidential election, saying he will respect any American president and deal with him, without giving his opinion on who will win.

"I am not for Bush or Kerry, I am for God," Rashid quoted him as saying.

Arafat, symbol of the Palestinian cause for four decades, flied Friday to Paris for treatment from his headquarters in Ramallah in the West Bank, where he had been confined by Israel for nearly three years.

He is currently hospitalized for medical tests in the Percy military hospital at Clamart, southwest of Paris, after one of his doctor declared Thursday that he was suffering from a potentially fatal blood disorder.

(Xinhua News Agency November 3, 2004)