Sharon's Chance for Survival Upgraded

Olmert Outlines Plan For Palestinian Vote In East Jerusalem

A woman prays before a poster she placed outside Sharon's hospital. Doctors said yesterday the prime minister was no longer in immediate danger of dying. (By Philippe Wojazer -- Reuters)

JERUSALEM, Jan. 10 -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is no longer in immediate danger of dying, doctors announced Tuesday, detailing further improvement in his condition following a massive stroke last week.

"Metaphorically speaking, we were right on the edge of a cliff," Yoram Weiss, an anesthesiologist working on Sharon's case, told reporters at a news conference Tuesday evening. "Now we've eased back five meters from the edge."

While Sharon remained incapacitated, the acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, spoke by phone with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and outlined a proposal to allow Palestinians in East Jerusalem to cast ballots in the Jan. 25 election of a new Palestinian legislature. Israel has banned voting in East Jerusalem, citing the participation of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, in national elections for the first time.

Israeli officials said Olmert, a former two-term mayor of Jerusalem, told Rice he would permit the estimated 120,000 Palestinians eligible to cast ballots in the city to do so either outside municipal boundaries or at designated post offices inside them.

But Olmert said he would not allow Hamas to appear on the ballot in the city. The organization, which does not recognize Israel, is projected to win 30 to 40 percent of the vote. The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, whose governing Fatah party is threatened politically by Hamas, has said he would cancel the election if Israel prohibits voting in the city, although it was unclear Tuesday whether he would accept the Israeli compromise.

Despite the generally positive report on Sharon's condition, doctors said it was too soon to tell whether he had suffered lasting brain damage from the stroke and the extensive bleeding that followed. The assessment was the most encouraging yet that Sharon, 77, will survive the brain trauma, but his return to office remained improbable.

Doctors were engaged in the delicate process of reviving Sharon from a medically induced coma. The staged procedure, which doctors said would take several more days, will allow his medical team to assess whether Sharon sustained neurological damage that could impair his mental faculties.

"All of us have to be patient," Weiss said. "There is improvement, but we still do not know about cognitive improvement. There are still medications that may have caused us not to see cognitive improvement. We simply need patience."

Shlomo Mor-Yosef, director of Hadassah-Ein Kerem Hospital, where Sharon is being treated, said the prime minister's breathing strengthened Tuesday. His vital signs remained within normal ranges, and he was showing other signs of neurological response.

Mozart and Israeli music was being played in Sharon's room, officials said. They described an increase in movement on the right side of his body, which was first detected on Monday. Doctors said the left side of his brain, which controls speech and other skills in right-handed people such as Sharon, may not have been seriously damaged by the stroke he suffered six days ago, which was followed by three emergency surgeries to control bleeding.

In another encouraging sign, doctors said, Sharon moved his left arm slightly. The development is important because the hemorrhaging occurred in the right side of his brain, so any movement on his left side suggests some activity in the half most likely damaged by the stroke.

Mor-Yosef denied a report published in the Tuesday edition of the newspaper Haaretz that Sharon's doctors misdiagnosed a brain disease after Sharon suffered a mild stroke in December.

The disease cited in the report was cerebral amyloid angiopathy, a condition that causes vessels in the brain to grow brittle and burst under pressure. Mor-Yosef said Sharon's doctors had detected the condition, contrary to the newspaper report, and taken it into account in treating the prime minister.