( L - R )SHARON AND OLMERT
JERUSALEM (Reuters):
PRIME MINISTER Ariel Sharon, deeply sedated and on a respirator, clung to life yesterday after a severe stroke that is likely to create a huge vacuum in Israeli politics and the Middle East peace process.
Surgeons at Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital said they stemmed the bleeding in the 77-year-old leader's brain in a seven-hour operation and described his condition as critical but stable.
Hospital director Shlomo Mor-Yosef, in an update to reporters several hours after surgery was completed, said Sharon would be kept in "deep sedation" and on a respirator for at least the next 24 hours to keep cranial pressure low.
Mor-Yosef did not say how much brain damage Sharon may have suffered from a type of stroke that is often fatal.
Medical experts agreed the prime minister was unlikely to pull through without his faculties being seriously impaired.
A cerebral haemorrhage, or bleeding stroke, felled Sharon on Wednesday in the midst of his fight for re-election on a promise to end conflict with the Palestinians. They lost their own iconic leader, Yasser Arafat, to a brain haemorrhage in November 2004 after weeks of illness.
Sharon, a former general, on whom Washington has pinned hopes for Middle East peace, has never designated a successor.
His deputy, Ehud Olmert, was named acting prime minister. But political analysts said the March 28 election Sharon had been widely expected to win as head of the new centrist Kadima party would become an open race if he died or was incapacitated.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hailed Sharon, who orchestrated a Gaza pullout in September that raised hopes for peace, as a "gigantic figure" in Middle Eastern politics.
"We are concentrating our prayers and our thoughts on hope for his recovery," Rice said.
Sharon, seriously overweight and hit by a mild stroke on December 18, was rushed for treatment late on Wednesday from his ranch in southern Israel after complaining he felt unwell.
