Brazil's Lula: Castro "ready to assume political role"

[Crvena zvezda]

Brazil's Lula: Castro "ready to assume political role"16 January 2008 | 11:27 | Source: AFP HAVANA -- Cuban President Fidel Castro is in "impeccable" health and "ready to take on his political role in Cuba."

Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva made the remarks today after visiting Castro.

"I think Fidel is ready to take on his political role in Cuba and his historical role before the world," Lula said, adding that the 81-year-old "has incredible lucidity and impeccable health."

Castro underwent gastrointestinal surgery in late July 2006, and handed over power "temporarily" to his brother Raul Castro, 76. He has not been seen in public since, but has appeared on television and publishes weekly commentaries in official dailies.

Lula said he met with Castro for two-and-a-half hours and talked with him "about all possible subjects.

"He's as lucid as ever," the Brazilian president said.

Before Lula's comments on Castro, photographs of the two men together were distributed to reporters at Havana's airport before the president boarded his flight out of Cuba.

In the first pictures of Fidel in three months, he could be seen dressed in a track suit, sitting down and pointing a camera toward Lula.

In another picture, Lula is taking a snapshot of the Cuban leader, and a third photo had both men sitting down and talking as an interpreter looks on.

Lula did not say where he met Castro, whose place of recovery has been kept a tight secret all these months.

Although Fidel's future has been a matter of speculation given the lack of official information, Castro on December 17 gave his strongest hint he would not return to power, in a letter of his read on television.

"My basic duty is not to cling to office, nor even more so to obstruct the rise of people much younger, but to pass on experiences and ideas whose modest value arises from the exceptional era in which I lived," Castro said in his signed letter.

Some political observers took the letter as a hint that Castro would leave the country's top leadership to his brother Raul.

Questions about Fidel's political future were revived in early December after he was nominated as a candidate to the National Assembly, making him officially eligible to resume the presidency if he should be elected to the assembly in January.

Cuban officials have said Fidel Castro keeps up with official business while he is recovering in an undisclosed location, but there has been no official indication of whether or when he would resume the presidency.

Lula has not been the first to comment on Fidel's apparent recovery from his ailments. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has visited him often and spoken with him on his weekly radio program in Caracas "Hello Mr. President."

Raul Castro, on Christmas Day, December 25, said his brother remained mentally acute and had the full backing of the Cuban Communist Party to seek a seventh five-year term in the National Assembly, a key step toward being renewed as the country's president.

Fidel "is not bothered over little issues, but we consult him on all the major questions," Raul said of his brother.

[Menydh]

The increasingly more common public appearances of Raúl Castro, suggest that Fidel Castro may be coming to an end. The question is if Raúl Castro will provide continuity to the regime, or if he will be a reformer.