CLAMART, France – Palestinian Arab leaders rushed to Paris yesterday to check on the critically ill Yasser Arafat, but hospital officials said visiting rights were restricted – setting the stage for a dramatic showdown between the delegation and Mr. Arafat’s wife.

Early yesterday, Suha Arafat accused the leadership – including top lieutenants Ahmed Qurei and Mahmoud Abbas – of coming to the French capital with the sole intention of usurping her husband’s role as head of the Palestinian Authority.

“I tell you they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive,” she shouted, using Mr. Arafat’s nom de guerre, in a furious telephone call with Al Jazeera TV from the 75-year-old Mr. Arafat’s bedside in a hospital southwest of Paris.

“He is all right, and he is going home,” she insisted.

Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior Arafat aide, called a news conference in the West Bank to dispute the claims. “What came from Mrs. Arafat doesn’t represent our people,” he said, accusing her of wanting “to be the lone decision maker.”

And Palestinian Cabinet minister Salah Taamri said, “We are Yasser Arafat’s family. We knew Yasser Arafat even before Mrs. Suha Arafat was born. We care for Yasser Arafat and no one has the right to deny the truth from the Palestinian people.”

The Palestinian Arab leadership abruptly called off the Paris trip, then reversed its decision. Mr. Qurei, the Palestinian Arab prime minister, and Mr. Abbas, a former prime minister and the current PLO deputy chairman, landed in France late yesterday on a private jet.

The prospect of their being barred from Mr. Arafat’s hospital bedside was bound to inflame an increasingly tense power struggle.

Mrs. Arafat seems to have aligned herself with hard-liners who apparently seek to take over the Palestinian Arab leadership in a post-Arafat era, though some Palestinian Arab officials said her motives are more financial. She is widely believed to have control of vast funds collected by the PLO.

Some Palestinian Arabs have complained Mrs. Arafat has gained too much power, as she controls the flow of information about her husband’s condition and has taken charge of access to the ailing leader. Mrs. Arafat, 41, lives in Paris and until his illness had not been to the West Bank or seen her husband since the latest round of Palestinian Arab violence began in 2000.

“She is not part of the Palestinian leadership,” Mr. Arafat’s security adviser Jibril Rajoub told Israel’s Channel Two TV.

On their trip to Paris, the foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, accompanied Mr. Qurei and Mr. Abbas, who is considered a likely successor to Mr. Arafat. They planned to meet with Mr. Arafat’s doctors and French officials, including President Chirac.

Mr. Arafat was in intensive care yesterday and his condition had not changed, a hospital spokesman said.

“He remains there and his condition is stable,” spokesman General Christian Estripeau told reporters at the Percy Military Training Hospital. However, “the medical situation of President Arafat compels us to restrict visitors,” he added.

General Estripeau said Mr. Arafat had “blood anomalies” when he was hospitalized October 29 and that, under treatment, his condition initially improved.

But, “after a phase of five days…the state of health of President Yasser Arafat became worrisome and necessitated his transfer into intensive care,” he added. Palestinian Arabs have been making contingency plans in the event of Mr. Arafat’s death.

[Also yesterday, when asked to identify Mr. Arafat as a “hero of national resistance” or a terrorist, 43% of French people polled chose the former, and 27% chose the latter, according the Jerusalem Post. The poll was commissioned jointly by the Liberation newspaper and a national public radio station.]