Yasser Arafat, who triumphantly forced his people's plight into the world spotlight but failed to achieve his lifelong quest for Palestinian statehood, died Thursday at age 75. Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat told The Associated Press that Arafat had died, and the official announcement came 15 minutes later outside the French military hospital where Arafat had been treated since being airlifted to Paris on Oct. 29. "Mr. Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, has died at the Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart on Nov. 11, 2004, at 3:30," hospital spokesman Gen. Christian Estripeau told reporters. French President Jacques Chirac said in a statement that he had learned of Arafat's death "with emotion" and that France would continue to press for an independent Palestinian state alongside that of Israel. "With him disappears the man of courage and conviction who, for 40 years, has incarnated the Palestinians' combat for recognition of their national rights," Chirac said. "May the loss that they have just suffered unite the Palestinians."
