Clamart, France ? Top Palestinian officials abruptly canceled a trip today to Paris to check on the condition of ailing leader Yasser Arafat after critical comments by Arafat’s wife, a spokesman said.

Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior Arafat aide, also said that the critical comments by Suha Arafat “don’t represent our people.”

Rahim spoke after Suha Arafat lashed out at Arafat’s lieutenants in a radio interview, accusing them of traveling to Paris with plans to bury her husband “alive.”

Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath had announced Sunday that they would travel to Paris to consult with Arafat’s doctors.

In a screaming telephone call from Arafat’s hospital bedside, Suha Arafat told pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television that she was issuing “an appeal to the Palestinian people.” She accused his top aides, who are traveling later today to Paris, 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 inherit are coming to Paris,” she shouted in Arabic, in her first public comments since Arafat fell ill.

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

A producer from Al-Jazeera told The Associated Press the station was confident it was Suha Arafat on the phone. She first called the network’s Ramallah office and then its headquarters in Qatar.

Despite her insistence that Arafat, 75, was fine, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier on Sunday called the Palestinian leader’s condition “very complex, very serious and stable right now.”

A young girl lights a candle at the makeshift shrine for ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in front of the Percy Military Teaching hospital in Clamart outside Paris. Arafat was clinging to life Sunday as he spent a fifth day in intensive care, but a senior aide denied he was in a coma.

Palestinians have been making contingency plans for the event of his death, and Qureia, Shaath and Abbas, deputy chairman of Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, were due today in Paris to consult with his doctors and French officials.

Palestinian leaders are working to avoid chaos or violence in the event of Arafat’s death. He has been ailing for nearly a month and doctors have described him in recent days as in critical but stable condition. They have not publicly released a diagnosis.

Early Sunday, one of Arafat’s senior aides, Nabil Abu Rdeneh, categorically denied Arafat was in coma. But Shaath later told CNN that he was in a “reversible” coma. He denied reports that there was brain or liver damage.

Asked about reports of brain death, Barnier replied: “I wouldn’t say that.”

Arafat’s death would open the potentially explosive issue of a burial site, and Palestinian officials have said Arafat wants to be interred in Jerusalem. Israel has refused the request.