RAMALLAH, 31 October 2004 — Palestinian leaders were united yesterday pledging loyalty to President Yasser Arafat who was declared leukemia-free after tests in a hospital in Paris.

Former Palestinian Premier Mahmoud Abbas urged unity among the Palestinian ranks after chairing the first Palestine Liberation Organization executive meeting without Arafat. Symbolically, the iconic leader’s chair was left empty at the PLO meeting.

Abbas sat to the right, with current Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei, who is handling the day-to-day affairs of the Palestinian Authority, to the left.

“We call on all our people and factions to unite and work together in responsible fashion to protect our destiny and homeland,” said Abbas, who is standing in as PLO chairman while Arafat is treated for a mystery disease.

Initial tests at a top Paris military hospital have ruled out leukemia, said Palestinian representative in France, Leila Shahid.

“For the moment, the doctors have excluded any trace of leukemia,” she said outside the hospital. “We can say his general condition ... is much better both physically and psychologically.”

Hosni Al-Aatari, head of the hospital in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Arafat was barricaded in his headquarters by the Israeli military for three years, backed up the findings.

“If it had been leukemia, we would have known from the first day because leukemia is easy to diagnose. The decision to send Arafat to France was taken in order to test for different kinds of blood disorders other than cancer.” He also said tests had been run to see if Arafat was poisoned.

“We looked for that but we didn’t discover anything, but if it was a rare poison, it is possible the doctors in Paris could identify that.”

“We were told to wait for the next 48 hours by the French doctors and not to jump to any conclusions and they will give us a full report when they finish the tests,” Palestinian Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN.

The French Defense Ministry said doctors have banned any visitors from seeing the weakened veteran leader for the next few days. It is the first time in almost three years that Arafat, who has become a symbol of the Palestinian struggle for statehood, has been allowed to leave his Ramallah base, a sign of the gravity of his condition.

Back in the West Bank, Abbas, who resigned as premier in September 2003 after a series of confrontations with Arafat, hoped that the 75-year-old leader “would soon return to his people and his cause who very much still need him”.

Meanwhile, 12-year-old Palestinian schoolboy Brahim Kamel was killed when Israeli soldiers shot him in the neck in the northern town of Jenin, where Palestinian security sources said the army has been waging a four-day operation.

Two other Palestinians — one in a critical condition — were hospitalized with gunshot wounds in the southern Gaza Strip.

— Additional input from agencies