Sharon fights for survival as his opponent meets Blair

Ariel Sharon, who started as an odds-on favourite to win the Israeli general election on 28 January, was fighting for his political life last night. But his counter-attack, in a televised press conference, may have added to his woes because it ended with him being pulled off the air by a judge.

Polls yesterday showed a torrent of sleaze allegations has eroded support for his right-wing Likud party by 25 per cent since the campaign began a month ago. The focus of suspicion is no longer just the ruling party, with its questionable ways of selecting parliamentary candidates. It is Mr Sharon and his two wheeler-dealer sons, Omri and Gilad.

In an address that was as much a campaign speech as self-vindication, the 74-year-old Prime Minister hit back indignantly at the Labour leader, Amram Mitzna, and his own media tormentors. But he was cut off mid-flow as the head of the election commission ordered Israeli television and radio stations to take him off the air.

"We are sorry to announce we have to stop broadcasting the speech immediately, according to an order by the election commission chairman, Judge Mishael Heshin, as the Prime Minister's comments amount to campaigning for the election," Army Radio said. In the month before polling day, broadcast propaganda is restricted to campaign commercials.

Mr Sharon said that when the state comptroller ruled more than a year ago that he had raised funds illegally for his successful 1999 bid for the Likud leadership, he told his sons to return the money immediately. He provided 500,000 shekels (£65,000 at today's rates) from his savings. He claimed he did not know how the rest had been found. "I know everything was done legally," he said.

The Prime Minister said that Cyril Kern, the businessman who lent the Sharons $1.5m (£950,000), was a brave comrade in arms. They had been friends for half a century. "He never asked anything," he added. "He never had any business here. Gilad borrowed from him at an agreed rate of interest. He paid interest and tax on the loan. Is that a bribe?"

A survey in the liberal daily Ha'aretz yesterday gave Likud 27 seats in the 120-member Knesset, four down in a single week. In early December, the party looked like winning 40. The decline was less drastic in three other polls.

"This is no longer a fall," Sima Kadmon, a political analyst, wrote in the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot. "Not even a crash. This is absolute loss of faith in the man and in the party." Likud's main hope of recovery is that their disaffected voters are not swinging to Mr Mitzna, who met Tony Blair in London yesterday. The Ha'aretz poll gave the main opposition party 24 seats, an increase of two in a week.

A survey on Israel's Channel 1 television found 51 per cent endorsing Mr Mitzna's agenda, especially his emphasis on a security fence separating Israelis and Palestinians, to 37 per cent for Mr Sharon's. But other polls showed Labour either marking time at 22 seats or falling slightly backwards. The main beneficiaries are religious and centre parties.

Analysis, page 15