HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): The elder brother of Fidel Castro said Wednesday the sidelined leader is well and strong after eight months' recovery from intestinal surgery.

"He is in one piece," said Ramon Castro, and "very well."

"These Castros are tough," said the elder Castro, 82.

Fidel Castro, 80, has ruled Cuba for nearly five decades, but on July 31 handed power "temporarily" to his younger brother, Raul Castro, 75.

Ramon Castro, an advisor to agriculture ministry spoke with reporters at an agricultural fair 25 kilometers (15 miles) outside Havana.

When reporters asked him when his brother would return to the helm, "Mongo" Castro responded with an agrarian aphorism: "Don't stir up a hornet's nest!"

Fidel Castro has defied predictions of his enemies in Washington and Miami that he could never return to power, or that the Americas' only communist government would collapse without him.

On March 21, however, a State Department spokesman said the United States sees no sign that Fidel Castro may return to power.

Asked about remarks by Cuban officials that Fidel Castro was well on the mend, spokesman Sean McCormack said: "I haven't seen any evidence of that."

In Havana, a top cabinet member said March 20 that Fidel Castro could resume a more active role in government work "soon."

"What we are expecting is that we will have him back (at work) with us, in a more active way, soon," Communist Party Politburo member and Basic Industry Minister Yadira Garcia told reporters.

"Our comandante is recovering, his recovery process is making progress," Garcia said. "I would say that he is already with the leadership that agrees on the main issues, and the country's most important decisions. And he also very involved in all these areas: oil and energy, on which he always has been in the lead."

"We have been receiving his direction, the instructions he gives, and the outlook is very good, very favorable," added Garcia, in an unusual level of detail on Castro's health, which Cuba regards as a state secret.