Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

No news for Cubans, no cancer for Fidel

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

by: Isabel Sanchez

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Cubans concerned about the health of ailing Fidel Castro - for most the only leader they have known - were kept in the dark by official Cuban media Tuesday, as a Spanish doctor who examined him refuted reports he is near death.

"We would like more specific information, even if (Fidel Castro) does not appear in public; but we would like some message from the Comandante, an explanation," a 20-year-old University of Havana student said privately.

Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido said Castro, 80, who underwent an operation on July 27, is "in a process of slow but progressive recovery" and does not need further surgery.

He made his remarks at a press conference in Madrid after returning from the Americas' only communist-ruled state.

The Cuban leader, who has been in power since 1959, has not been seen in public for five months. There have been few medical updates since his reported intestinal surgery in July.

Tightly controlled state media offered no news on the latest update on Fidel's health Tuesday.

US Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte told The Washington Post on December 15 that "Everything we see indicates it will not be much longer... months, not years," for the 80-year-old Cuban leader.

But Garcia Sabrido, who heads a surgery unit at a major Madrid hospital and is described by the Spanish media as a top gastroenterologist, described Castro's condition as "fine".

"Every day he asks to go back to work but the doctors won't allow it," he said after his visit to Cuba late last week. He said he was full of admiration at Castro's "excellent and fantastic intellectual activity," added Garcia Sabrido.

Cuba's iconic leader "is not suffering from a malignant illness but from a benign process with a series of complications," he said, adding he could not give further details because of medical privacy.

Asked whether he was suffering from cancer, Garcia Sabrido said: "I absolutely deny that, based on the information I have."

Garcia Sabrido heads one of the three surgery wards at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon university hospital, a 400-year-old establishment with a staff of 8,000 reputed to be one of the best in Spain.

He examined Castro on the request of Havana and told the media he had travelled to the island on "a strictly personal basis" after informing his own hospital authorities. It was his first medical examination of the Cuban leader but he said several members of his medical team were old acquaintances.

In Cuba, where Fidel's brother Raul Castro is serving as interim president, Castro's health is being treated as a state secret.

But in the year marking the 48th anniversary of Castro's ousting of dictator Fulgencio Batista, his absence at a December 2 military parade stunned people and sparked speculation he might be seriously ill, or near death. He was last seen in an October 28 video, in which he appeared weak.

On Friday he was absent from the National Assembly's last session of the year, only the second time in 30 years that Castro had missed an assembly meeting.

Raul Castro, who presided over the event, said Fidel was "progressing in his recovery."

But Cubans used to decades of Fidel's dominant presence in official media, have not grown used to his absence of the past few months.

News reports late last week said the Cuban leader was too ill to receive his old friend, Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was on the island for nearly a month.

The Colombian magazine Semana reported that it was the first time Fidel Castro did not meet with his confidant Garcia Marquez, and that it was a "sign that things have grown more complicated" for the Cuban leader.

Dissident groups opposed to Castro's rule generally see his continued absence as evidence he will never be back full-time at Cuba's helm.

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