Havana, August 24: Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who is recovering from major intestinal surgery, appeared in the first new video of him in 14 months, joking and chatting with Venezuelan students.
Castro was yesterday shown in the video wearing a track suit and in an animated conversation with a group of law students from Venezuela’s University of Carabobo who came to visit him at his home on Saturday.
He met with them for three hours, Cuban television, which aired the video yesterday, said.
Castro was seen discussing global warming and telling the students “we are witnessing very, very, very grave developments, I would say grave for our very survival.”
Castro, who turned 83 this month, led the Americas’ only one-party communist country through nearly half of the 20th century and into the 21st before taking ill in July 2006.
The government later said he had gastrointestinal surgery.
He has not made a public appearance since then, and until recently photographs of him have showed him looking thin and frail, always dressed in a track suit.
But recent visitors have reported that Castro, who is still the chief of the Cuban Communist Party, was looking stronger and fitter.
Castro meets Ecuador leader
Cuba’s Communist Youth newspaper is showing a photo of a healthier-looking Fidel Castro talking with the visiting Ecuadorean President.
The photo, which appeared yesterday, in Juventud Rebelde shows the 83-year-old Castro wearing a white shirt instead of the sports apparel he has worn in recent photos. The meeting with Rafael Correa occurred on Friday.
Castro ceded power to his brother Raul after falling ill three years ago and he has not been seen in public since. He stepped down as President in February 2008.
Cuba’s state-run press occasionally publishes photographs of Castro with visitors, but news of his health is considered a state secret. Castro also often publishes essays on global affairs.
Correa’s visit includes medical checkups.
–Agencies