CLAMART, France – Yasser Arafat’s wife lashed out at his top lieutenants today, accusing them of traveling to Paris with plans to “bury” her husband “alive.”

In a screaming telephone call from Mr. Arafat’s hospital bedside, Suha Arafat told pan-Arab Al Jazeera TV that she was issuing “an appeal to the Palestinian people.” She accused his top aides, who are traveling to Paris later today, of conspiring to usurp her husband’s four-decade-long role as Palestinian leader.

“Let it be known to the honest Palestinian people that a bunch of those who want to take over are coming to Paris tomorrow,” she screamed in Arabic over the telephone.

“You have to realize the size of the conspiracy. I tell you they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive,” she said, using his nom de guerre. “He is all right and he is going home. God is great.”

An Al Jazeera producer said the broadcaster was confident it was Mrs. Arafat on the telephone, and that she had called their Ramallah office from Mr. Arafat’s bedside at a French military hospital. Despite her insistence that Mr. Arafat was fine, the French foreign minister, Michel Barnier, yesterday called the Palestinian Arab leader’s condition “very complex, very serious, and stable right now.”

Palestinian Arabs have been making contingency plans for the event of his death, and Prime Minister Qurei, Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, and Mahmoud Abbas, the former prime minister and deputy chairman of Mr. Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, were due in Paris today to consult with his doctors and French officials.

Some Palestinian Arabs have complained that Mrs. Arafat has gained too much power, as she controls the flow of information about Mr. Arafat’s condition and has taken charge of access to the ailing leader.

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

Mrs. Arafat, who lives in Paris, has not been to the West Bank or seen her husband since the latest round of Palestinian-Arab violence began in 2000.

She also is widely believed to have control of vast amounts of PLO money.

The 75-year-old Mr. Arafat spent his fifth day yesterday in the intensive care unit of a French military hospital, where he has been undergoing treatment for more than a week.

Mr. Arafat’s condition has been a mystery for days: Doctors have made no comment about a diagnosis, and his aides have been making contradictory and unclear reports.

Two days after the Palestinian-Arab envoy to France, Leila Shahid, said Mr. Arafat was comatose and “between life and death,” spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh told reporters, “He is not in a coma.” Mr. Abu Rdeneh, who spoke to reporters as he came out of the military hospital, refused to say if he had seen Mr. Arafat personally.