CAIRO, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that the Palestinian people should have an empowered prime minister who would share power with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

    In an interview with Egypt's Nile TV aired on Saturday, Powell said that the Bush administration has long maintained that the Palestinians would be better off with an empowered prime minister who has political authority and takes control of security forces.

    "And that individual, so empowered, would give the Israelis a partner for negotiations, and would give the quartet a partner for negotiations," he said, referring to the quartet committee jointly formed by the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union to help achieve peace in the Middle East.

    "We would assume that Chairman Arafat would assume a different kind of position within the Palestinian community," he said.

    As for what would happen if the 75-year-old Palestinian leader dies, Powell refused to speculate.

    "I'm not prepared to speculate because he is still alive, Chairman Arafat, and he certainly was expressing to the people who were with him that he was looking forward to returning," he said.

    Arafat, widely seen as a living symbol of the Palestinian struggle for statehood, has been sick over the past two weeks, and is now in France for medical treatment for what doctors said a possibly fatal blood disorder.

    Accompanied by his wife and a team of medics and advisors, Arafat was airlifted to Jordan from his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah early on Friday. He was then flown to Paris from the Jordanian capital Amman.

    Israel terms Arafat as an obstacle to the Mideast peace process,accusing him of fomenting violence, an allegation strongly denied by Arafat.

    The United States, a strong supporter of the Jewish state, has shunned the Palestinian leader, claiming that an empowered Palestinian prime minister could replace Arafat as a negotiating partner in peace talks with Israel. Enditem