The 77-year-old Sharon, whose fate is crucial to Israel and the wider Middle East, remains in the intensive care unit at Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital after suffering a massive brain haemorrhage six days ago, but medics indicated that his condition was no longer life-threatening.
"The prime minister's condition is serious but there is no immediate danger to the prime minister's life," said Sharon's anaesthetist Yoram Weiss. "Most of the medication has been withdrawn but there is still medication in his blood," Weiss said, specifying that it would take a few more days before the sedation was lifted entirely.
"Since yesterday the prime minister has been breathing spontaneously. He is on a respirator but he is the one who is operating the respirator," he said.
The hospital's director, Shlomo Mor Yosef, told the news conference that Sharon had moved his left hand for the first time and had managed to move his right arm more than in an initial stimulus test on Monday.
"The prime minister moved his right hand and right arm with bigger movement than yesterday. He also moved his left hand," said Mor Yosef. "These are neurological changes that show a slight progress in the brain function of the prime minister, Ariel Sharon," he said.
Medics have said only the right-hand side of Sharon's brain, which controls the left side of his body, was affected in the brain haemorrhage and the latest movement may indicate he has retained more brain function than first thought.
For days doctors have doubted Sharon can again lead the country, leaving Israel staring into a political void just over two months before a general election which the prime minister's new Kadima party had been tipped to win.
Initial positive signs have buoyed confidence that doctors can save his life although medics have warned his condition will not allow him to absorb the stresses of leading the Jewish state.
Weiss was reluctant to be drawn on the prime minister's long-term prospects.
"I believe that all of us need to be patient," said the anaesthetist. "We are not prophets," he said.
Reports said that Mozart, one of Sharon's favorite composers, was being played round the clock and his sense of smell stimulated with slow roasted meat.
Israelis and world leaders have already braced themselves for the end of the Sharon era, fearing his demise would spark new turmoil in a region struggling to find the path to peace after decades of conflict.
With the premier in intensive care, his stand-in Ehud Olmert has pledged business as usual, as public figures urge a time of national unity and an end to political bickering until Israel rides out the crisis.
A decision on whether Sharon's condition permanently incapacitates him as premier will be made by Israel's attorney general Menachem Mazuz only after doctors have determined the full damage to his brain.
Meanwhile, doctors treating Sharon denied that they triggered the premier's haemorrhage by prescribing anti-coagulants after failing to detect a blood disease in his brain.
Had doctors diagnosed after an earlier minor stroke that Sharon was suffering a disease of the blood vessels in the brain, they would almost certainly not have prescribed the drugs which are known to increase the risk of strokes and brain haemorrhage, the Ha'aretz newspaper said.
However Mor Yosef angrily dismissed the report at a press conference as "untrue". "The Hadassah doctors knew about the prime minister's brain diagnosis when he was first admitted," he told reporters.
© 2005 Agence France-Presse
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