JAMAICA/ CUBA : Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says Fidel Castro is recovering well after visiting with him.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Monday (August 14) that ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro was recovering well after visiting him over the weekend. "In the end, I left with the firm conviction that Fidel is there in control of himself and recovering better than we had hoped," Chavez said speaking in Jamaica where he was signing bilateral accords with the Caribbean country. Chavez's comments came after Cuban television aired video of the two leaders together on Sunday (August 13). The video, further evidence that Castro is recovering from surgery for intestinal bleeding about two weeks ago, showed a bed-ridden but alert Castro talking and smiling with Chavez on his 80th birthday on Sunday. Still frail from his operation, he was shown writing on a note pad, and looking at a photo album Chavez showed him of the two men travelling in Venezuela. The video followed photographs of the visit of the two leftist leaders published on Monday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma. The daily said Castro, who temporarily ceded power to the younger Raul on July 31 due to surgery for intestinal bleeding, spent more than three hours with Chavez on Sunday in what it called "An Unforgettable Afternoon Among Brothers." Granma said the leaders shared gifts, anecdotes, laughter and a light snack as they marked Castro's 80th birthday. Chavez, who has helped Cuba recover from the collapse of its former benefactor, the Soviet Union, by providing cheap oil and money for Cuban doctors, was given a portrait of Castro by Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros. Chavez's presents to Castro included a dagger with a marble handle and scabbard that belonged to South American independence hero and Venezuelan patriot Simon Bolivar. Chavez, according to Granma, was impressed by Castro's recovery. "What kind of human being is this? What's he made of?" asked Chavez. In one photo, Castro lay in bed in what looked like a hospital room. The two men, fierce critics of U.S. policies in Latin America, wore bright red shirts. The pictures were posted on Granma's Web site (http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu). Also present was Raul, Cuba's defence minister who made his first public appearance as acting president on Sunday when he greeted Chavez at Havana airport. The photos of Castro with Chavez followed the publication on Sunday of a series of pictures of Castro on his own. There were no new details on Castro's medical condition, which the veteran revolutionary has termed a state secret. But in a message to Cubans on Sunday, Castro said his recovery could take time. "I suggest you be optimistic and, at the same time, always prepared to receive bad news," he said. A Brazilian Catholic priest and liberation theologian, Carlos Alberto Libanio Christo, known as Frei Betto, returned from a visit to Havana on Monday and said he had talked to Raul Castro but was unable to see the "comandante." News Castro had appeared in photos came as a relief to many Cubans worried his death could create upheaval in one of the world's last communist outposts. But some thought his condition was worse than the nation was being told. After 47 years in power, Castro is the last of the key Cold War-era figures and has survived 10 hostile U.S. presidents.

ITN Source | August 16, 2006

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