Americas News
Castro showing 'impressive' progress, official daily says (Roundup)
By DPA
Aug 7, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Havana/Bogota/Caracas - Cuban President Fidel Castro is making an 'impressive' recovery, the official Communist Party newspaper Granma said Monday, while a top official said Castro is recovering well and that there is 'total normality' in the country.

The daily Granma quoted a friend of Castro, who compared the head of state with the indigenous caguairan tree for his 'resistance' and 'resilience.' The paper did not name the source.

Castro, who has led Cuba since the revolution in 1959, underwent surgery on July 31 for intestinal bleeding.

At the time, he explained in a handwritten message that he will need weeks to recover from the illness and surgery, and he temporarily delegated power to his younger brother Raul, Castro's long-time designated successor.

Neither man has appeared in photographs since then, not even the state-owned media.

Sunday will be Fidel Castro's 80th birthday, but celebrations have been put off until December.

The speaker of Cuba's National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, said in an interview with Telesur television channel that an invasion of Cuba sponsored by the United States would make the current situation in Iraq seem like 'child's play.'

'Any attempt by the United States against Cuba's sovereignty will turn into hell. The Iraq thing will be child's play,' the Cuban official warned.

US President George W Bush said Monday that the Cuban people should determine their own future and cautioned against Cuban- Americans returning to the country before a democratic path has been chosen.

'We would hope that - and we'll make this very clear - that as Cuba has the possibility of transforming itself from a tyrannical situation to a different type of society, the Cuban people ought to decide,' Bush told reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Alarcon said such comments were out of order, and that the US should not care about how an independent country like Cuba makes decisions. Alarcon indicated that the Cuban people support Raul Castro, and said that it would be 'unheard of' that the United States would try to prevent that delegation of power, which he stressed is provided for by the country's constitution.

On a similar note, more than 400 international figures including eight Nobel Prize winners have urged the United States to 'respect Cuba's sovereignty,' according to a petition read Monday in Havana by poet Roberto Fernandez Retamar.

'Given the growing threat against the integrity of a nation, and the peace and security in Latin America and the world, the undersigned demand that the government of the United States respects Cuba's sovereignty,' the document said.

'The current political situation in Cuba is characterised by calm, quiet and total normality. The experience that we have lived has served to strengthen the will for resistance of our people and Cubans' human solidarity spirit,' Alarcon said.

About Fidel Castro's health, the speaker of the National Assembly said he is recovering well.

Earlier, speaking from Bogota, where he was attending Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's reinauguration, Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage said that the elder Castro is 'well attended in a hospital' and fully conscious.

'He continues to evolve favourably, and we are sure that he is going to recover, as he himself said, to resume (his duties) in a few weeks,' Lage said.

The Cuban weekly Trabajadores reported Monday that rallies have been held in 80,000 workplaces across Cuba to express support for Fidel and Raul Castro and for the 'continuity of the revolution.' The publication estimated that more than 3 million Cubans had taken part in the rallies on the island of 11 million people.