Friday, October 27, 2006

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Interim Cuban leader Raul Castro appeared today for the first time in three weeks to congratulate Palante humor magazine on its 45th anniversary, the Cuban agency AIN said.

Castro, interim head of state while his brother Fidel, Cuba's longtime strongman, recuperates from surgery, hadn't appeared in public since October 8, when he announced that Fidel was "constantly improving" and "not dead as the Miami press has reported".

Fidel Castro, 80, temporarily handed over the presidency to his brother on July 31 while he recuperated from gastrointestinal surgery.

He has since been seen by the public on television only a few times, visibly weakened.

Unseen since September 18, Fidel's hospitalization has fueled rumors that he might be dying and that a change from his Communist regime of nearly five decades might be imminent.

The US weekly magazine, Time, has reported citing US government officials that Fidel Castro was believed to have terminal cancer and was unlikely to return to power.

On Tuesday Cuba's top diplomat in the United States insisted Fidel Castro would return to the helm of his government.

"We can say that his health has been improving every day. He will be assuming his duties as the president of Cuba. That's all I can say," Dagoberto Rodriguez, chief of the Cuban Interests Section here, said in Washington.

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