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Castro 'ready to return'
16/01/2008 09:43 - (SA)
Havana - Ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro is in "impeccable" health and "ready to take on his political role in Cuba", Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva said on Tuesday after visiting Castro.
"I think Fidel is ready to take on his political role in Cuba and his historical role before the world," Lula said, adding that the 81-year-old "has incredible lucidity and impeccable health".
Castro underwent gastrointestinal surgery in late July 2006, and handed over power "temporarily" to his brother Raul Castro, 76. He has not been seen in public since, but has appeared on television and publishes weekly commentaries in official dailies.
Lula said he met with Castro for two-and-a-half hours and talked with him "about all possible subjects.
"He's as lucid as ever," the Brazilian president said.
Before Lula's comments on Castro, photographs of the two men together were distributed to reporters at Havana's airport before the president boarded his flight out of Cuba.
In the first pictures of Fidel in three months, he could be seen dressed in a track suit, sitting down and pointing a camera toward Lula.
In another picture, Lula is taking a snapshot of the Cuban leader, and a third photo had both men sitting down and talking as an interpreter looks on.
Lula did not say where he met Castro, whose place of recovery has been kept a tight secret all these months.
Will not cling to power
Although Fidel's future has been a matter of speculation given the lack of official information, Castro on December 17 gave his strongest hint he would not return to power, in a letter of his read on television.
"My basic duty is not to cling to office, nor even more so to obstruct the rise of people much younger, but to pass on experiences and ideas whose modest value arises from the exceptional era in which I lived," Castro said in his signed letter.
Some political observers took the letter as a hint that Castro would leave the country's top leadership to his brother Raul.
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