US REACTION: The cerebral haemorrhage suffered by Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon threatens to deprive the Bush administration of its closest working partner in the Middle East, casting doubt on president George Bush's pledge to help create a Palestinian state before the end of his term.
Much of the administration's policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as its 2002 decision to refuse to deal with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, has been influenced by Mr Sharon, who first won election shortly after Mr Bush took office in 2001.
Mr Sharon also convinced Mr Bush to back his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, winning from the president a written pledge that appeared to acknowledge Israel could keep large settlements on the West Bank and refuse resettlement of Palestinians in any eventual peace deal.
Mr Bush's agreement with Mr Sharon initially caused a fierce backlash in the Arab world, but Mr Sharon followed through with his plan, which ruptured his Likud Party and allowed some Arab states to make tentative diplomatic overtures to Israel.
In a statement on Wednesday, Mr Bush lauded Mr Sharon as "a man of courage and peace" and said he and first lady Laura Bush "are praying for his recovery".
Mr Sharon and Mr Bush met nearly a dozen times, but US and Israeli officials say the relationship has been generally very proper and not especially warm. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so politically sensitive, both domestically and internationally, that the two men have carefully plotted their formal meetings.
Mr Sharon, in particular, has wanted to focus on political issues even when Mr Bush tried to establish a closer personal bond.
Mr Bush first met Mr Sharon in late 1998, when he was still Texas governor and trying to burnish his international credentials with a trip to Israel. Mr Sharon gave the president a helicopter tour over the Israeli-occupied territories, designed to demonstrate Israel's vulnerability to attack and the security provided by Israeli settlements on strategic hilltops.
The helicopter trip made a definite impression on Mr Bush, who mentioned it at his first National Security Council meeting.
For Mr Sharon, a close working relationship with Mr Bush was considered critical to his success at home. Two previous Likud prime ministers had fallen from power after they clashed with a US president. So Mr Sharon has carefully manoeuvred US policy toward his goals while at the same time professing adherence to stated US goals. even if he viewed them with distaste.
Thus Mr Sharon grudgingly accepted the US-backed peace plan known as the "road map", but let it become moribund while he crafted his ideas to withdraw from Gaza. The departure from Gaza ultimately became the centre of US peacemaking efforts.
Mr Bush frequently reiterates his goal of creating a Palestinian state, but Mr Sharon's goal appears to be something less than that - Palestinian areas bordered by a fence and criss-crossed by roads and tunnels to well-protected Israeli settlements.
Yet Mr Sharon's Gaza plan raised Mr Bush's opinion of the Israeli leader. Mr Bush viewed him for much of his first term as a good person with little or no vision, but that assessment changed, US and Israeli officials say, when Mr Sharon presented Mr Bush with his plan to vacate Gaza.
Mr Bush's statement on Wednesday night referring to Mr Sharon as a man of peace echoed an unscripted 2002 comment in which Mr Bush publicly called him a "man of peace" during an especially tough crackdown on the Palestinians. Arab leaders at the time reacted with outrage at the comments.
During a meeting months later, when the Israeli leader - who tends to speak in platitudes in the formal sessions - began to say he was a "man of peace and security", Mr Bush interrupted him. "I know you are a man of security," Mr Bush said, according to a witness to the conversation. "I want you to work harder on the peace part."
Then, using colloquial language that first seemed to baffle Mr Sharon, Mr Bush jabbed: "I said you were a man of peace. I want you to know I took immense crap for that."
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice yesterday hailed Mr Sharon as a "gigantic figure" in Middle Eastern politics and said the desire for peace ran deep in Israeli society. Ms Rice said the Palestinian elections must go ahead as planned and she urged the Palestinian Authority to do more to ensure security.
Asked whether the militant group Hamas should be allowed to participate in the elections, she reiterated US policy that it was a "terrorist organisation" but she said the Bush administration recognised this was a transitional time in Palestinian politics.
"This is an internal matter for the Palestinians," she said. - (Los Angeles Times-Washington Post service/Reuters)