Sharon shows further improvement, still critical

By Matt Spetalnick

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
showed further improvement on Tuesday from a massive stroke,
moving his left side for the first time since doctors started
bringing him out of an induced coma.

Hadassah hospital director Shlomo Mor-Yosef said that while
Sharon’s medical team had seen slight progress as they reduced
his sedation to assess brain damage, he remained in “severe,
critical” condition.

But doctors said Sharon’s life was in no immediate danger.

“Metaphorically speaking, we have backed five meters away
from the edge of the cliff,” Dr. Yoram Weiss, one of Sharon’s
anesthesiologists, told reporters.

With Israelis keeping a nationwide vigil for the
77-year-old leader many had seen as their best hope for peace
with the Palestinians, campaigning for a March 28 general
election that Sharon had been favored to win ground to a halt.

Six days after Sharon suffered his stroke, doctors still
did not know how badly his faculties had been impaired, and
medical experts say even if he survives he will have little
chance of recovering enough to resume his duties.

Doctors said it would be several days before the sedatives
wore off completely and they could start gauging Sharon’s
ability to think and reason. He has yet to open his eyes. “We
have a long way to go and we need to be patient,” Weiss said.

Another doctor said when one of Sharon’s sons spoke, the
prime minister’s blood pressure rose. Mozart symphonies were
played at his bedside in an effort to elicit a response.

Among the ways doctors hope to stimulate his senses is to
place his favorite foods, including a plate of shawarma, a
sliced meat dish, in his hospital room, Israel Radio said.

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 the future of Middle
East diplomacy.

Despite fears of a political vacuum in Sharon’s absence,
the United States has since discreetly resumed its efforts for
progress between Israel and the Palestinians.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas and also discussed the Middle East with
other international powerbrokers. Two envoys were due in the
region this week on a trip postponed after Sharon fell ill.

DOMINATING FIGURE

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

As doctors launched their effort to wean Sharon off his
sedation on Monday, Sharon started breathing on his own —
though still hooked up to a respirator — and slightly moved
his right arm and leg.

Doctors said they elicited further right-side movement on
Tuesday and he also moved his left hand for the first time.

Sharon had been kept in a coma since Wednesday to aid
healing after surgery to stop widespread bleeding in his brain.

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 parliamentarians.

Sharon’s deputy, Ehud Olmert, 60, already named interim
prime minister, would be expected to keep the job in the run-up
to the March election.

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 leaders have voiced wishes for Sharon’s
recovery, and President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters on Monday
he did not expect a major impact on peace efforts.

However, reflecting feelings over Sharon’s handling of a
five-year-old Palestinian uprising, dozens of militants marched
through Gaza city on Monday, chanting “Death to Sharon.”

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

Political analysts said Israel’s 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 TV opinion poll showed Olmert edging ahead as the
favored candidate over Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

(Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Mohammed Assadi
in Ramallah, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Saul Hudson in
Washington)