Sharon in hospital after mild stroke
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-19 08:09

Goldman said the premier had no serious health problems in the past aside from his weight, which he had been struggling with for decades. Sharon undergoes annual checkups, Goldman said.

Mini-strokes are rarely of major consequence by themselves, but they signal a high risk that a person will suffer a full-blown stroke in the coming months: one in seven within a year, according to the American Heart Association.

Mini-strokes — medically known as transcient ischemic attacks, or TIAs — are caused by a blood clot that forms anywhere in the body and lodges in a vessel in the head, depriving a region of the brain of blood and oxygen.

"There was no indication that this was going to happen," he said.

Sharon has been one of the most charismatic and controversial figures in Israel during a public career that has spanned more than half a century.

He fought in most of Israel's wars, gaining a reputation as a military genius known for daring tactics and sometimes disobeying orders. But his reputation as an Israeli war hero was tarnished by a massacre of Palestinian refugees in the early 1980s, when he was defense minister.

An Israeli commission rejected Sharon's contention that he knew nothing about the massacre and found him indirectly responsible, costing him his job as defense minister.

He rejected that finding and stayed in the government as a minister without portfolio. Sharon gradually rehabilitated himself, serving in parliament and holding a variety of Cabinet posts through the 1980s and 1990s.

He became known as "the bulldozer," never shy of confrontation, a man who could get things done, but who showed little regard for the opinions of his critics.