Costa Rican President Oscar Arias

The Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma ran a seething statement from the Foreign Ministry calling the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner "a vulgar mercenary" of the United States.

Arias, a US ally who has called for democracy in Cuba, "is a vulgar mercenary ... a vain and mediocre character desperate for attention. He cannot be taken seriously."

Cuba was outraged in particular when in recent statements Arias "disrespectfully and unethically compared Fidel (Castro) with the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet," the statement added.

It slammed Arias as "an ego-tripper (and) pawn of Yankee imperialism" and added: "Certainly, no one will be there at his political funeral."

Interestingly the Cuban statement criticised Arias saying he had been elected with only 25 percent of the vote, and did not organize a national referendum on constitutional reform that was "called for" by Costa Rica's people.

Communist Cuba does not allow multiparty politics at all.

And it rejected a referendum on reform when thousands of Cubans requested one in 2002.

In May 2002, Cuban activists delivered more than 11,000 signatures to the National Assembly requesting a referendum on political and economic reforms from within the current system. They acted days before former US president Jimmy Carter visited the island and mentioned the campaign in an uncensored telecast.

But the Cuban government rejected it out of hand.

Fidel Castro, 80, who reportedly underwent intestinal surgery on July 27, and four days later temporarily handed over power to his brother Raul Castro, 75.

The longtime Cuban leader, who has been in power since 1959, has not been seen in public for five months.

On his return to Spain after visiting Cuba since Thursday, Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, a chief surgeon at a Madrid hospital, denied "absolutely" that Fidel Castro had cancer.

Fidel Castro "is not suffering from a malignant illness but from a benign process with a series of complications," the surgeon told a news conference in Madrid.

The top US intelligence official earlier this month signaled Fidel Castro's imminent death.

"Everything we see indicates it will not be much longer ... months, not years" for Fidel Castro, US Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte was quoted as saying by The Washington Post.

But Garcia Sabrido, who heads a surgery unit at Gregorio Maranon university hospital and is described by the Spanish media as a top gastroenterologist, described Fidel 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."