By Giles Elgood
LONDON (Reuters) - World leaders on Thursday expressed hopes Ariel Sharon would recover from his massive stroke but made clear the Israeli prime minister's dominance of Middle East politics was now over.
Only a miracle would allow the stricken former general to take up the political reins again before March 28 Israeli parliamentary elections -- and some in the region hoped he would succumb to his illness.
'Hopefully, the news that the criminal of Sabra and Shatila has joined his ancestors is final,' said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to the semi-official students' news agency ISNA.
Sabra and Shatila are the names of refugee camps in Beirut where pro-Israeli Christian militiamen massacred Palestinians after Sharon masterminded the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
The Palestinian Islamic group Hamas accused Sharon of 'massacres and terrorism' and said: 'The whole region will be better off with him absent.'
Western leaders by contrast wished Sharon a speedy recovery, even while acknowledging that his political career was almost certainly at an end.
U.S. President George W. Bush praised Sharon, who has been crucial to his hopes for Middle East peacemaking, as a man of 'cou"
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