Paris ? A deeply comatose Yasser Arafat clung to life Tuesday after suffering another downturn, his major organs still functioning but his survival dependent “on the will of God,” the Palestinian foreign minister said.

Palestinian leaders made preparations for Arafat’s eventual death. They said they would bury Arafat at his sandbagged headquarters in the West Bank and turn the site into a shrine.

Television live feed positions are seen in a building overlooking Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Aides to Arafat announced Tuesday that his condition had worsened, and that plans were being made for his burial at the compound.

But the 75-year-old leader, whose condition has steadily worsened since he was flown to a military hospital outside Paris on Oct. 29, would not be removed from life support, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said.

Today, Taissir Dayut Tamimi, a top Islamic cleric, was rushing to Arafat’s hospital bedside. Shaath called Tamimi “a very close friend” of Arafat and said that “we think having a religious person beside him in these difficult moments is relevant.”

He dismissed speculation that Tamimi, head of the Islamic court in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, could advise on removing Arafat from life support. “No mufti in the world has the right to do that,” Shaath said.

Shaath discounted reports that Arafat’s organs had failed.

“His brain, his heart and his lungs are still functioning and he is alive,” Shaath said after he and other Palestinian officials met with Arafat’s doctors, his wife and French President Jacques Chirac.

“He will live or die depending on his body’s ability to resist and on the will of God,” Shaath said.