Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

Cuba's 100 days without Fidel - and counting
11-09-2006

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): After 100 days without Fidel Castro at the helm, Cubans, including Castro himself, are not sure when he will return to run the Americas' only communist state.

Castro, the only leader Cuba has known for nearly five decades, handed the reins of power to his brother and defense minister Raul Castro, after undergoing intestinal surgery, saying on July 31 he would likely take months to recover.

Cuba has defied the direst predictions of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Miami that the Cuban system could not survive without Fidel. For a hundred days, it has.

Castro turned 80 on August 13, but asked that the celebration be postponed until December 2, the 50th anniversary of the day Castro and 81 bearded men, including brother Raul and Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, returned from exile in Mexico aboard a yacht named Granma, to launch a military campaign that would topple US-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista, in 1959.

However, Castro is not sure to make that date, either.

The Guayasamin Foundation, in charge of Castro's belated birthday, said the celebration was still scheduled, but was unsure whether the guest of honour would attend.

"At the right moment in his delicate recovery, he will decide when he will be able to be with us here in Havana," the foundation, named for late Ecuadoran painter Oswaldo Guayasamin, said in a statement.

The foundation planned a concert and an international gathering for August 10-13, but moved events to November 28-December 2, a date that has not slipped, said Alfredo Vera, of the foundation.

"We do not know, and I believe that he does not know, either, when he can attend," he said.

Vera added that Fidel Castro had "given us the go-ahead".

Castro did not speak at the Non-Aligned summit held here last month nor did he address the UN General Assembly in September, leaving that task to Cuban National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon.

But he has not been entirely absent from the world stage. Castro has met with his ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and on Tuesday he congratulated former Marxist Daniel Ortega, who fought a war against US-backed insurgents two decades ago, for his election as president of Nicaragua.

Castro, once a staunch supporter of Ortega's Sandinista administration, called the announcement Tuesday by Nicaraguan election officials of the results of Sunday's vote a "grandiose victory."

In a statement attributed to him read over Cuban television, Castro branded Ortega's triumph a "Sandinista victory that fills our people with happiness and the terrorist and genocidal government of the United States with dishonour.

"For this reason, both you and the heroic people of Nicaragua deserve our warmest congratulations," Castro added in his statement.

Raul Castro, 75, makes public appearances rarely, and from time to time says his brother is "improving" although his elder brother makes television appearances and is visibly weak.

US officials, fueling rumours that Castro has terminal cancer, told US magazine, Time, that he was unlikely to return to power.