JERUSALEM Yasser Arafat's medical records from the French military hospital where he died in November, which have been held in secrecy, reveal that he died of a stroke that resulted from a bleeding disorder caused by an unknown infection.

A first independent review of the records, obtained by The New York Times, shows that despite extensive testing, his doctors could not determine the underlying disease that killed him. But the records dispel one significant and widespread rumor - that Arafat died of AIDS.

The course of his illness and pattern of his symptoms make AIDS highly unlikely, according to independent experts who have reviewed the records at the request of The Times. They also suggest that poisoning was highly unlikely, although senior Palestinian officials continue to allege that Arafat, who died Nov. 11 at age 75 after an illness lasting a month, was indeed poisoned.

The records also indicate that Arafat did not receive antibiotics until Oct. 27, or 15 days after the onset of his illness, which was originally diagnosed as a flu. That was only two days before he was transferred to the Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart, outside Paris, and it was probably too late to save him, according to the Israeli and American medical experts consulted by The Times, who agreed to review the records on condition that they not be identified by name.

The specialists have no prior connection to the case. Arafat's doctors in Ramallah also did not seem to recognize that he suffered from a serious blood disorder, disseminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC, which was never controlled and led to his death. Even the French doctors never discovered the specific cause of the infection that resulted in the bleeding disorder, the records show.

"It's a big puzzle," said a specialist in infectious diseases. No autopsy was performed because Arafat's wife objected to one, The records make no mention of an AIDS test, a deficiency the experts found curious and even bizarre. An Israeli infectious disease specialist said he would have performed the test, which is now standard, if only to be thorough and to refute the rumors that surrounded the case.

News accounts during the Palestinian leader's illness made that specialist strongly suspect that Arafat had AIDS, he said. But after studying the records, the specialist said that AIDS was improbable, given the swift onset of Arafat's intestinal troubles four hours after eating on the evening of Oct. 12.

A senior Palestinian official provided Arafat's medical records to Avi Isacharoff and Amos Harel, Israeli journalists who are working on a new edition of their book, "The Seventh War: How We Won and Why We Lost the War With the Palestinians." They agreed to share the records in collaboration with The Times, which did its own investigation.

Arafat's final illness began suddenly when he vomited and had abdominal pain and watery diarrhea hours after his supper in his compound in Ramallah, where the Israelis had kept him isolated for three years. These symptoms, including a constant urge to defecate, but without fever, continued for two weeks. He became stuporous and lost three kilos, or 6.6 pounds. He was treated for thrombocytopenia, an abnormally low platelet count, with transfusions of platelets and injections of gamma globulin.

The Ramallah doctors apparently did not realize that he was experiencing the bleeding disorder DIC. According to the French records, doctors at the hospital outside Paris did detect the bleeding disorder.

Many senior Palestinian officials have continued to charge that Arafat was poisoned. In a recent telephone interview from Amman, Arafat's personal doctor, Ashraf al-Kurdi, also said that he believed the Palestinian leader was poisoned. But the findings argue strongly against poisoning.

The French doctors sent specimens to three laboratories for standard toxicology tests to detect metals and drugs like barbiturates, opiates and amphetamines. None was detected. The experts said that Arafat did not suffer the extensive kidney and liver damage they would expect from a poison, although he did have jaundice.

Still, one Israeli doctor speculated that a rarer poison like ricin, or even a toxin produced by cholera, could explain some of Arafat's symptoms and his rapid deterioration. He did improve for a time in the French hospital, talking and walking with members of his entourage.

Then he slipped into a coma on Nov. 3, when he was transferred to intensive care from the hematology service. That course would seem to contradict the idea of poisoning, the experts said. The biggest mystery is the exact nature of the infection that seemed to start the prolonged, irreversible course of the bleeding disorder.

The consultants, like the French doctors, could not determine where in the bowel the infection was located and what microbes caused it. Arafat's doctors in Ramallah provided some clinical information to the French. Some of the samples taken in Ramallah were sent for analysis to Tunis first, but some biopsies did not arrive there, the records said.

One possibility is a food-borne illness from a toxin produced by staphylococcal bacteria. The illness occurs commonly from food contamination. Theoretically, someone could have put the toxin in what Arafat ate. But he did not have some of the features of this type of food-borne illness. The French doctors clearly were baffled by what was wrong with the frail 75-year-old who had no obvious cause for the infection.

By the time he arrived in France, it was probably too late to save him, the experts said. During his medical care in Ramallah before he went to France, four Egyptian doctors came, as did five doctors from Tunis, summoned by Arafat's wife, Suha. They did not seem to recognize that he had DIC and apparently did not start prescribing antibiotics quickly enough, the experts said.

The Ramallah doctors initially thought he had flu. His own physician, Kurdi, was not allowed to come to Ramallah until Oct. 28, the day before Arafat was evacuated to Paris.

The French summary of Arafat's history cites the Faculty of Medicine in Tunis as saying that cultures of blood, stool, urine and bone marrow were negative, as were tests for cancer and leukemia. It is not known how long the cultures were in transit from Ramallah and their condition on arrival in Tunis. A stool culture, for example, would be worthless if it had dried out. The antibiotics given in Ramallah may also have prevented growth in a laboratory culture of any bacteria that may have caused Arafat's intestinal infection, the consultant experts said.

The biopsies performed in France and Ramallah did not show evidence of any infectious agent or cancer. The bleeding disorder kept the French doctors from doing some tests they said they would have liked to have done. Although the French doctors also prescribed a number of antibiotics, Arafat's condition worsened.

An American hematology consultant theorized that Arafat may have had a common infection known as diverticulitis, which develops in outpouchings, known as diverticula, in the large bowel. An infected diverticula can burst, leaking its contents into the abdominal cavity to cause a localized abscess or an infection like peritonitis.

The French doctors said they did not find this condition, but it can be hard to detect, the consultant said. The consultant also said that prescribing heparin for Arafat's disseminated intravascular coagulation probably hastened his death, but that it was inevitable at this stage. American hematologists generally do not recommend heparin for DIC, the specialist said.

Israelis note that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon saw Arafat as a terrorist and an obstacle to peace, and had been on record as favoring his elimination. In 2002, Sharon told the newspaper Maariv that he regretted not "eliminating" Arafat in 1982, during the Lebanese war. Arafat's death would have saved many lives, Sharon said, "but we had a commitment" not to harm him, "and commitments must be honored."

He also said then that "we have no intention of harming Arafat personally." But Uri Dan, a Sharon confidant, wrote in November 2004 that he remembered meetings in 1982 held by Sharon, then defense minister, in his Tel Aviv office "in which he asked the heads of the Mossad when they would finally carry out Prime Minister Menachem Begin's order to eliminate Arafat."

In September 2003, Sharon's vice prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said of Arafat that "killing him is definitely one of the options." He added: "We are trying to eliminate all the heads of terror, and Arafat is one of the heads of terror."

There have been reports in the Israeli press of a secret cabinet decision made in late 2003 to eliminate Arafat, which Dan describes as "a deliberately vaguely worded decision to remove Arafat, since he was an obstacle to peace." Officials have hinted that operational plans were drawn up to eliminate Arafat, although they say no action