Signs of brain activity but Sharon still critical

By Tali Caspi

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Doctors monitored Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon for more signs of brain activity on
Tuesday after reducing his sedation to try to rouse him from a
coma and assess the extent of damage from a severe stroke.

Israelis keeping anxious vigil for the 77-year-old leader
many had seen as their best hope for resolving their conflict
with the Palestinians took heart from news that Sharon had
begun breathing on his own and moved an arm and leg slightly.

But he remained in critical condition and doctors do not
yet know how severely his brain has been damaged.

Hospital director Shlomo Mor-Yosef said Sharon’s responses
were “increasingly significant” but he was still unconscious.

“We cannot say he is out of danger,” chief surgeon Felix
Umansky told reporters on Monday, adding that Sharon had not
yet opened his eyes five days after suffering the stroke.

The loss of Sharon, who raised peace hopes by pulling
settlers and troops out of Gaza in September after 38 years of
occupation, would deepen uncertainty over negotiations with the
Palestinians.

Despite fears of a political vacuum during Sharon’s
treatment, the United States has since discreetly resumed its
efforts to resolve the conflict.

U.S. officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had
spoken to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and discussed the
Middle East with other international powerbrokers.

On Tuesday, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch and
Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams will begin a
trip to the region that they postponed after Sharon went into
hospital on Wednesday.

“In terms of contacts at the working level, those do
continue … There are still agreements in place that require
follow-up. We are following up,” State Department spokesman
Sean McCormack said.

MOVING SLIGHTLY

Sharon’s surgeons say there is a good chance he will live.
But medical consensus is he has suffered too much damage to
ever return to politics, an arena he has dominated like no
figure since founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.

“He is still connected to respirators that help him but the
prime minister is breathing spontaneously,” Mor-Yosef said.
“This is the first sign of some sort of activity in his brain.”

He later said Sharon had responded to pain stimuli by
slightly moving his right arm and right leg and that further
tests were planned in coming days.

Sharon responded several more times to pain stimuli late on
Monday and doctors were continuing to reduce the level of
sedation, Israel Radio reported early on Tuesday.

The process of weaning Sharon off sedation is critical for
gauging the extent his faculties have been impaired and his
chances for survival. But outside experts say there is no
guarantee he will come out from under anesthesia.

Sharon had been kept in a coma since Wednesday to aid
healing after emergency surgery to stop bleeding in his brain.
Neurosurgeons will be now be looking for further responses to
pain and touch and whether he reacts to spoken commands.

However, if doctors declare Sharon permanently
incapacitated, they will pass on their finding to Israel’s
attorney general. The cabinet would then elect a prime minister
from ministers of Sharon’s Kadima party who are also lawmakers.

CRUCIAL JUNCTURE

Sharon’s deputy, Ehud Olmert, already named interim prime
minister, would be expected to keep the job in the run-up to a
general election already scheduled for March 28.

World leaders have pledged support for Olmert, 60, a former
Jerusalem mayor, as he stands in for Sharon.

Sharon is reviled in the Arab world but increasingly seen
by the West as having opened up new prospects for peace. He
suffered the stroke at a crucial juncture as he was fighting
for re-election on a promise to end conflict with the
Palestinians.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie voiced wishes for
Sharon’s recovery, and Abbas told reporters he did not expect a
major impact on peace efforts.

However, reflecting feelings over Sharon’s handling of a
five-year-old uprising, dozens of Palestinian militants marched
through Gaza city chanting “death to Sharon” and burned a
picture of the Israeli leader.

Sharon has said military measures taken in Palestinian
areas were self-defense against suicide bombings and other
attacks.

Political analysts said Israel’s March election, which
Sharon had been widely expected to win as head of his new
centrist Kadima party, would become an open race without him.

But a television poll showed Olmert edging ahead as the
favored candidate over Likud chief Benjamin Netanyahu.

(Additional reporting by Tova Cohen, Jeffrey Heller, Dan
Williams, Jonathan Saul, Megan Goldin in Jerusalem; Mohammed
Assadi and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; and Saul Hudson in
Washington)