BETHLEHEM - The head of a medical committee investigating the death of President Yasser Arafat will arrive in the West Bank on Wednesday.

Abdullah Al-Basheer, a doctor in Jordan, will spend three days in Ramallah, where he will meet Palestinian leaders and conduct medical lectures, he told Jordanian newspaper Al-Rai.

Al-Basheer will also examine Arafat's medical reports, and has begun communications with the Swiss laboratory that found abnormal levels of a rare and radioactive element called polonium on his belongings.

He noted that medical reports indicate Arafat's symptoms prior to his death in 2004 are not consistent with this radioactive element.

The doctor did not mention exhuming Arafat's body, which his wife is now calling for after Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera revealed the Swiss institute's findings last week.

The Palestinian Authority has agreed to exhume his body from Ramallah to complete investigations, but has yet to set a date to carry it out.

Arafat's death during the second intifada was shrouded in mystery, after he was airlifted from effective confinement in his presidential compound in Ramallah, to a military hospital in France.

French doctors who treated him in his final days said they could not establish the cause of death. French officials, citing privacy laws, refused to give details of the nature of his illness.