Israeli acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Sunday to carry out the wishes of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who has been fighting for his life since Wednesday's massive stroke.

"I will carry out the wishes" of Prime Minister Sharon, Olmert said at the first cabinet meeting he had chaired since Sharon's hospitalization on Wednesday.

"If Sharon could speak, he would want everyone to return to work on the country's pressing security, social and economic issues," Olmert told the ministers.

Sharon was admitted to Hadassah Hospital on Wednesday evening after suffering a significant stroke and cerebral hemorrhage.

The 77-year-old Sharon has been under deep sedation and on a respirator and doctors at Hadassah Hospital were reviewing a new scan that Sharon had just undergone in order to decide when to bring him out of the medically induced coma.

Hadassah director Shlomo Mor-Yosef told reporters outside the hospital on late Saturday that a scan of Sharon's brain on Saturday showed a slight improvement, but his overall condition remained critical.

The absence of Sharon from office is widely seen as putting much uncertainty to the March 28 Israeli general elections, which Sharon was almost certain to win as head of his newly-founded Kadima party.

The sudden grave illness of the veteran politician, the architect of the Israeli Gaza withdrawal in September, has also cast cloud over the Mideast peace process.

Olmert, 60, has been a long-time close ally with Sharon. He has been among the first patch to leave the center-right Likud party and join Sharon's new centrist Kadima.

Source: Xinhua