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Sharon in hospital after mild stroke
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-19 08:09
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a mild stroke Sunday, but his
condition quickly improved and his doctor said he was expected to be released
from the hospital after a few days. Sharon aides said he was lucid and in
control of the government.
Ariel Sharon
[Reuters] | The prime minister never lost
consciousness and was talking and joking with his family hours after arriving at
Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital, doctors said. He was treated with blood thinners
and suffered no damage from the stroke, said his personal physician, Boleslaw
Goldman.
"He's lucid, he's fully functional," Sharon aide Raanan Gissin said.
Sharon, 77 and very overweight, has been a fixture of Israeli politics for
more than three decades. His illness came a little more than three months before
he was to lead his new Kadima Party into national elections, and his illness
could hamper his efforts to finish building the nascent centrist faction, which
has a commanding lead in the polls.
The stroke was almost certain to make Sharon's health a major campaign issue,
but it would have little immediate effect on Israeli policy or peace efforts
since no major decisions were expected during the campaign.
The Web site of the Haaretz daily newspaper reported that one of its
reporters spoke to Sharon late Sunday night.
"I'm fine," Haaretz quoted him as saying. "Apparently I should have taken a
few days off for vacation. But we're continuing to move forward," he said,
making a play on the name of his party, Kadima, which means "forward" in Hebrew.
Sharon received get-well messages from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas,
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and U.S. envoy Elliot Abrams, who was speaking
on behalf of the U.S. government, Gissin said.
However, in Gaza, dozens of armed men from the Popular Resistance Committees,
a small Palestinian militant group, fired guns in the air, screamed "Sharon is
dead!" and handed out pastries to motorists in celebration of the news that
Sharon was ill.
Palestinian militants view Sharon, who led Israel's fight against the
five-year Palestinian uprising, as a hated enemy despite his pullout from the
Gaza Strip earlier this year.
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