A Palestinian inquiry commission has failed to determine the cause of Yasser Arafat's death and recommends waiting for additional material, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Wednesday.

Qureia, who outlined the inquiry's preliminary conclusions, also ruled out the possibility that Arafat died of AIDS.

"French and Palestinian doctors who treated the martyred brother found that medicine could not find the disease that infected Arafat - neither viruses, nor germs, nor AIDS, nor bacteria," Qureia said. He added that an AIDS test had been conducted and negated this option.

He said the file "will remain open because doctors in the future might be able to discover the reason for the death."

Qureia may have released these findings to counter recent details of Arafat's medical records released by Haaretz. These indicated that Arafat may have died of AIDS or was somehow poisoned by Israel - an allegation Israel has categorically rejected.

The records showed that Arafat died of a massive stroke after suffering intestinal inflammation, jaundice and a blood condition. However, the records were inconclusive about the cause of the blood condition, known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC. The condition has numerous causes, ranging from infections to colitis to liver disease.

Meanwhile, two foreign journalists were kidnapped for a few hours yesterday in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian sources said gunmen kidnapped the pair - Dion Nissenbaum, of Knight Ridder Newspapers, and a photographer - on the Gaza Strip's coastal road near Khan Yunis and took them away at gunpoint. After a few hours of negotiations between the abductors and the Gaza Strip's defense commander, Brigadier Jamal Kaid, the two were handed over to him.

Earlier this week, a Palestinian boy was arrested in Nablus on suspicion of planning a suicide bombing.

In his interrogation, the boy said he had fallen out with his father, and that a Fatah group from the Balata refugee camp heard of this and prevailed on him to carry out a suicide bombing. He said they threatened to kill him unless he agreed to carry out the mission.

A video clip showed the boy, holding a gun and dressed in combat clothes, recording a "will" in a Nablus apartment prior to going out on a suicide bombing.