RAMALLAH, West Bank ? In a gathering showdown with Yasser Arafat’s wife, Palestinian leaders are to meet with French government officials and possibly doctors today to try to find out what is wrong with the critically ill Arafat.

The hurried trip Monday to Paris by Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Queria and the deputy chairman of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas, is aimed at getting around the refusal of Arafat’s wife, Suha, to divulge details of his condition.

On Monday, Suha Arafat accused her husband’s inner circle of trying to usurp Arafat’s power and to “bury him alive.”

Ten days have passed since a semi-lucid Arafat, said to be suffering from an unspecified blood disorder, was airlifted from his Ramallah headquarters to a hospital near Paris.

Unconfirmed reports have since described Arafat, 75, as comatose and close to death, but there has been no official diagnosis.

Under French privacy law, if a patient is incapacitated, the hospital defers to the wishes of the next of kin on, among other things, divulging the patient’s condition.

But some Palestinians have complained that Suha Arafat, 41, has failed to accommodate the Palestinian public’s need to know the status of a preeminent figure, who they say is more than her private property.

Moreover, they say, she is obstructing an orderly transfer of power within the Palestinian Authority should one be necessary.

A makeshift shrine for ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat grows daily in front of the Percy Military Teaching hospital in Clamart, France, outside Paris. Palestinian officials will try to meet today with Arafat's doctors to determine the state of his health.

If Arafat is declared clinically dead or incompetent, power passes to the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council. A presidential election must be held within 60 days.

Since Arafat’s hospitalization on Oct. 29, his wife has controlled release of all information and access to her husband’s bedside.

Although Suha Arafat had not seen her husband in more than four years, she rushed to Ramallah to supervise his evacuation to Paris. Some viewed that as an act of love. Others believe she was simply protecting her interest in her husband’s estate, estimated at millions of dollars.

In February, French prosecutors opened an inquiry into transfers totaling $11.4 million into bank accounts held in France by Suha Arafat. She has maintained that all of the transactions were proper.

Born a Christian in the West Bank city of Nablus, the former Suha Tawil served as Arafat’s secretary when he was in exile in Tunisia. In 1991, she converted to Islam and married the Palestinian leader. He was 62. She was 28. The couple’s daughter, Zahwa, was born in 1995.