Wed Sep 12, 2007 5:58PM EDT
By Anthony Boadle
HAVANA (Reuters) - Two senior Cuban officials said on Wednesday that
Cuban leader Fidel Castro, absent from public view for more than a year,
is recovering from an intestinal problem that required several operations.
Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto said Castro was not at death's door
and dismissed rumors in Miami of his demise as "wishful thinking" by
exiled opponents.
Prieto said he had no inside information on Castro's medical condition,
but deduced from the 81-year-old leader's regular essays and columns
that he is not dying.
"Nobody who was agonizing could be doing these analyses and reflections
about day-to-day reality," he told reporters. "He is aware of everything
that happens, he is reading the wires, he is analyzing and evaluating."
The speaker of Cuba's National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, told CNN that
Castro's recovery was "going well" although he had not been in touch
with him personally for more than a week.
"He suffered an intestinal accident, from which he is recovering after
several operations," Alarcon said on CNN.
Alarcon said Cuba was calm without Castro at the helm, while the
convalescing leader had plenty of time to read and write, as evidenced
by the 4,256-word essay published by the Communist Party daily Granma on
Wednesday.
In it, Castro claimed the U.S. government had misinformed Americans and
the world about Sept 11, echoing conspiracy theories about the attacks
six years ago with hijacked planes.
Castro has not appeared in public since emergency bowel surgery forced
him to hand over power to his brother Raul Castro in July 2006,
relinquishing control for the first time since his 1959 revolution.
Details of Castro's health have not leaked from his water-tight inner
circle.
Cubans last saw him in a pre-taped television interview broadcast on
June 5 in which he appeared to be stronger.
Since March, Castro has reasserted his presence in Cuba through
newspaper columns also read out fully on the country's state-controlled
radio and television.
His prolonged absence has fueled death rumors in Miami, a bastion of
anti-Castro sentiment among the large Cuban emigre community, which
eagerly awaits the demise of a man they see as a tyrant who turned their
homeland into a communist state.
"I think they are people who confound their wishes with reality, they
are obsessed with this," Prieto said.
While Cuban officials say Castro is on the mend, they have stopped
insisting that he will return to office.
Prieto, Cuba's only long-haired minister and a member of the Communist
Party's powerful executive Politburo, said he was convinced an
"overwhelming majority" of Cubans want Castro to continue leading Cuba
as president of the Council of State.
The National Assembly must elect the 31-member Council of State at the
start of its next session in March. Any changes to its leadership would
take place at that time.
(Additional reporting by Esteban Israel)
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN1244756020070912?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
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