"His situation is very difficult and critical," said Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath.
Asked after leaving the hospital about reports that Arafat was close to death, Shaath said: "Only God knows the answer to that."
The Palestinian Authority's ambassador to the UN, who is also Yasser Arafat's nephew, said the Palestinian leader is still alive.
"The situation is very difficult but he is still alive," Nasser Al-Kidwa said, after speaking to Arafat's doctors.
Just hours earlier, the French medical team treating Arafat publicly acknowledged for the first time that the Palestinian leader is in a coma.
"President Yasser Arafat's health worsened in the night," said military hospital spokesman General Christian Estripeau. "His coma, which led to his admission to the intensive care unit, became deeper this morning."
Estripeau said doctors were withholding a prognosis but that his deterioration marked "a significant stage."
The announcement came amid a dramatic dispute between Arafat's wife, Suha, and Palestinian officials whom she accused of trying to topple the veteran leader.
But Shaath, the foreign minister, said after the hospital visit that the dispute with Suha Arafat was now over. In an angry outburst, Suha had accused the leaders of travelling to Paris to try and oust her husband from power and "bury" him "alive."
Her accusation outraged the Palestinian leadership and set the stage for a dramatic showdown that could inflame a tense power struggle between Arafat's long-time lieutenants and his wife.
Palestinians have been making contingency plans in the event of Arafat's death.
Qureia has assumed some emergency financial and administrative powers. Abbas has chaired a series of meetings of the PLO executive committee. But neither politician has much grass-roots support among Palestinians or important militant groups.
Suha Arafat, his wife of 13 years and mother of his daughter, seems to have aligned herself with hard-liners who apparently seek to take over the Palestinian leadership in a post-Arafat era, though some Palestinian officials said her motives are more financial.
According to a senior official in Arafat's office, she has received monthly payments of 54,000 from Palestinian coffers and is widely believed to have control of vast funds collected by the PLO.
This year, French prosecutors launched a money-laundering probe into transfers of more than £6 million into her accounts. She has refused to talk to reporters about Palestinian finances. Suha Arafat, 41, lives in Paris and has not been to the West Bank or seen her husband since the latest round of Palestinian violence began in 2000.
