"I can assure you that he is not suffering from leukemia or any serious problem. His situation is curable, and we hope that he will recover soon," Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.

Arafat, 75, was flown to Paris on Friday aboard a French government jet to receive treatment after collapsing in his West Bank headquarters.

The ailing Palestinian leader was undergoing a battery of tests at the Percy military hospital in the southwestern Paris suburb of Clamart to determine the nature of a blood disorder.

"His condition is better than expected," Abu Rudeina added.

When asked about the nature of Arafat's illness, the advisor replied: "I am not a doctor, but all options are being considered including poisoning. It is up to the French doctors. He is under the full control of the French doctors."

Initial results from a battery of tests on Yasser Arafat found no signs Saturday of leukemia, Palestinian officials said, but blood doctors were still probing the cause of the ailing Palestinian leader's dramatic deterioration in health.

"Arafat does not have leukemia," Mohammed Rashid, a close Arafat aide, said Saturday night. "It's been ruled out."

Results from additional tests to determine what was wrong were due Wednesday, he said.

Arafat was rushed from the West Bank to a French military hospital after being ill for two weeks with what was initially described as a bad flu, with symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea.

Doctors were now trying to determine whether Arafat might be suffering from a viral infection or some type of poisoning, an Arafat aide said. He declined to give further details.

But Rashid, speaking to reporters at a Paris hotel where a contingent of Palestinian officials was staying, said Arafat was eating again Saturday and able to keep food down.

The comments from Rashid, Arafat's financial adviser, were more definitive than those hours earlier from Leila Shahid, the Palestinian envoy to France.

Shahid, speaking in several languages to reporters outside the Percy military training hospital southwest of Paris: "The doctors exclude, already from what he has done in terms of exams, any possibility of leukemia. I repeat: the doctors exclude for the time being any possibility of leukemia."

In Arabic, Shahid said other tests also have "not shown any sign of other dangerous disease." But "there are other possibilities and we are still exploring," she added in English.

Earlier, a Palestinian official who spoke on condition of anonymity had said there was a strong possibility Arafat was suffering from the bone and blood cancer and that a team of French physicians specialising in the disorder examined the Palestinian leader for a second day Saturday.