Surgeons stopped renewed bleeding in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's brain in an emergency operation today but he remains in critical condition two days after a massive stroke, a doctor said.
"During the surgery the cranial pressure was released and some of the blood clots that remained from the previous surgery were drained," Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, director of Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital, told reporters.
"At the end of the operation there is no active bleeding," Mor-Yosef said after the nearly five-hour procedure.
He said Sharon's brain scan showed "significant improvement" compared with previous scans, but added the 77-year-old leader, who is in a medically-induced coma and on a respirator, remained in "critical but stable" condition.
After an earlier operation yesterday to stem bleeding in Sharon's brain, doctors had said they intended to awaken him from sedation as early as Saturday to assess his mental and physical abilities. Mor-Yosef did not say whether that remained the plan.
Doctors decided on a second operation after a brain scan on Friday morning showed heightened pressure and new bleeding.
The death or incapacitation of Sharon, who raised peace hopes by pulling Israeli settlers and troops out of Gaza in September to end 38 years of military rule, would create a huge vacuum in Israeli politics and the Middle East peace process.
Sharon, long reviled in the Arab world but increasingly regarded as a peacemaker by the West, suffered his stroke at a crucial juncture in Israeli politics, as he was fighting for re-election on a promise to end conflict with the Palestinians.
Underlining his pivotal role, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cancelled a trip to Indonesia and Australia because of concerns over his condition, officials informed of the decision said in Washington.
A US official, who asked to remain anonymous, said Rice did not "want to be a long way from Israel should he die".
Medical experts said that even if Sharon pulled through, his faculties could be seriously impaired, making a return to work impossible. His deputy, Ehud Olmert, was named acting prime minister on Wednesday after Sharon fell ill.
Political analysts said Israel's planned March election, which Sharon had been widely expected to win as head of the new centrist Kadima party, would become an open race without him.
A large part of Sharon's popularity among Israelis stems from a belief he could take bold steps others would not get away with, given his background as the archetypal hawk.
But two opinion polls published in newspapers today suggested that under Olmert, Kadima would still win around 40 of parliament's 120 seats - well ahead of Likud, the rightist party Sharon abandoned this year, and centre-left Labour.