CLAMART, France, Nov 10 (AFP) - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat remained close to death Wednesday as a senior Islamic cleric visited his bedside and an aide declared him to be "in the hands of God."

"He is alive. He is ill and his condition is very bad, but he is still alive," Tayssir el-Tamimi, head of religious courts in the Palestinian territories, told reporters after seeing Arafat.

"I remained at Arafat's side for almost one hour and I asked God to relieve his suffering," Tamimi said.

The ailing veteran of the Palestinian struggle was in a deep coma at the Percy military clinic outside Paris, where scores of journalists were camped out in expectation of a new medical bulletin.

On Tuesday a series of contradictory claims about his death concluded with foreign minister Nabil Shaath affirming that Arafat was still alive though on life-support equipment, and on Wednesday the Palestinian representative in France Leila Shahid said there had been no change.

Arafat "is still alive and in a deep coma," Shahid told reporters at 1300 GMT.

"Like yesterday he is in a deep coma with complications in the condition of all his vital organs, so he is in a very critical state. The reality is that he is in the hands of God," she earlier told France Info radio.

Tamimi's arrival in Paris early Wednesday encouraged rumours that a death announcement was imminent, but the cleric strongly denied suggestions that he was there to authorise the switch-off of Arafat's artificial respirator.

"There is no question of switching off the equipment. It is against Islamic law which bans this type of practice. As long as there is warmth and life in his body, we cannot switch off the equipment," he said at the hospital.

Shahid also denied that "euthanasia" was being contemplated.

"Clearly a man of religion should be near a patient in the final phase of his life. That is why he is there, not to disconnect him - because euthanasia is banned in Islam," she said.

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