Sharon stable after minor stroke

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, battling for re-election after spearheading a pullout from Gaza, suffered a minor stroke on Sunday and was rushed to hospital, where doctors said he was in stable condition.

The 77-year-old former general has been a pivotal figure in the Jewish state for decades and turned Israeli politics on its head by evacuating Jewish settlers from Gaza and then quitting his party with a vow to seek peace with the Palestinians.

"I feel fine," Sharon was quoted as saying by aides. Israeli television said he had quipped to doctors: "You're still not getting rid of me."

The hospital where Sharon was rushed for treatment said he had suffered a minor stroke, but his condition improved during tests. Doctors expected that he would be released in the morning.

Aides said Sharon felt unwell after finishing a series of meetings at his Jerusalem office and was taken to Hadassah hospital, where he underwent a brain scan.

"He lost consciousness on the way to hospital and then regained it," one medic told reporters earlier.

Sharon led the most dramatic turnaround in Israeli politics for decades by withdrawing settlers and soldiers from Gaza in August and September and then breaking with his rightist Likud party, saying he wanted to pursue peacemaking with Palestinians.

Sharon is very much a one-man show and if he were forced from the political stage it would inevitably mean another upheaval, but aides rushed to say that there was no question of anyone standing in for him even temporarily.

With the Gaza withdrawal, the first from occupied land on which Palestinians want to found a state, the "Bulldozer" redefined his image as the archetypal Israeli hawk and won worldwide applause for a step that could boost peacemaking.

Goodwill messages

The hospital was inundated with goodwill messages from around the world. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wished Sharon a speedy recovery. So did the White House.

But in the Gaza Strip, some Palestinians fired rifles in the air and handed out sweets in celebration, shouting "Death to Sharon". Some ultra-rightist Jews, who feel Sharon betrayed the settlement cause, also prayed that he would die.

Channel One television said Sharon had been speaking on the telephone from his car with one of his sons, Gilad, when he told him: "I don't feel well."

"Dad, go to hospital immediately," Gilad replied, according to the television report.

Sharon's motorcade then sped to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed a minor stroke caused by a blockage of blood to the brain.

Doctors usually have a three-hour window after a stroke in which to administer a drug called TPA to try to dissolve a blood clot.

The portly Sharon has occasionally looked drawn during the months of struggling to push through the withdrawal, but there have been no major health scares until now.

Minor strokes can cause temporary weakness or numbness in arms and legs, as well as speech difficulties.

Sharon is in the midst of a campaign to win re-election in a March 28 national ballot at the head of a new centrist movement he established last month after quitting the Likud party in the face of a far-right rebellion over the Gaza withdrawal.

Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would assume Sharon's duties in the event of the prime minister's disability or death.

- REUTERS