Castro not terminally ill, said unlikely to govern
HAVANA, Dec 18 (Reuters): Fidel Castro is not terminally ill and would make a public appearance shortly, but is unlikely to return to governing Cuba on a day-to-day basis, Cuban government officials told a visiting delegation of members of the US Congress.
“The party line is that Fidel is coming back.
He does not have cancer,” Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat, told reporters yesterday.
William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat and one of the leaders of the delegation, told The New York Times that he had concluded after discussions with officials that the 80-year-old Cuban leader, who has undergone intestinal surgery, would not return to running his country on a day-to-day basis.
“The Cubans were empathetic, and I believe them, that Fidel does not have cancer and that the illness he does have is not terminal,” Delahunt told the Times after returning to Washington.
Castro, who has not been seen in public since July 26, was planning to make a public appearance shortly, and if he did resume a political role, it would probably be setting broad policy, Delahunt told the newspaper.
“The functioning of the government, that transition has already occurred,” it quoted him as saying.
If Castro reappears, “this will not be Fidel sitting at his desk,” Delahunt told the Times.
“This will be Fidel Castro is alive and recovering.” Castro did not appear at celebrations of his 80th birthday this month, prompting rumors that he had died or was near death.
The 10-member U.S.
congressional delegation, was the largest to go to Cuba since Castro’s 1959 revolution.
The three-day visit was aimed at improving ties between Havana and Washington.
But the delegation’s efforts to launch a new dialogue with Cuba on the assumption that Castro was out of the picture were rebuffed by officials who insisted he was recovering.
“What dialogue?” one Cuban official told Reuters.
“The ball has been in the US court for a long time.” The American legislators also failed to get a requested meeting with acting President Raul Castro, who took over the government temporarily on July 31 after his brother’s surgery.
Cuba has closely guarded information on Fidel Castro’s medical condition.
But his closest ally, Venezuelan President Hugo, has said that although Castro does not have cancer, he is fighting a “great battle” against a “very serious” illness.
The Communist Party newspaper reported on Saturday that Fidel Castro had telephoned several Cuban lawmakers.
The visiting U.S.
legislators, who favor easing restrictions on trade and travel to Cuba, said they were told that with or without Fidel Castro, the island nation would continue to be a one-party communist state.
“Cuban officials made every effort to convince us that ...
the potential demise and health issues of Fidel Castro do not change the nature of the government or the policies of this country,” said Representative Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican.
The delegation met separately with the three most senior Cuban officials in charge of policy toward the United States — Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, the ruling Communist Party international relations secretary Fernando Remirez de Esternoz and Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba’s National Assembly.
McGovern said that, despite assurances that Fidel Castro is recovering, the Cuban leader’s advanced age meant that even if he did return it would only be for a short time.
“It would be a mistake to sit around and not do anything,” to change US policy, which he called a “Cold War relic” that had failed to bring change to Cuba in almost half a century.
Flush us out at your peril, Sri Lanka rebels warn army COLOMBO, Dec 18 (Reuters): Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers warned the army on Monday they would resort to pre-emptive strikes if the military pushes ahead with a declared plan to drive them out of rebel-held territory in the island’s volatile east.
The military says more than 17,000 war-displaced have fled camps in and around the Tiger-held town of Vakarai in the district of Batticaloa, some through jungle and others by sea, since early November to escape artillery duels.
The army accuses the Tigers of using civilians as human shields and, to the shock of Nordic truce monitors, has vowed to push them out of areas they control under the terms of a tattered 2002 ceasefire pact which still holds on paper.
The rebels say the civilians are fleeing because of army artillery shells that have hit refugee camps and killed dozens.
They deny they have held civilians against their will as some witnesses have said.
“The flushing-out plan ...
is not about flushing out the LTTE, it’s about displacing all Tamils,” Tiger military spokesman Rasaiah Ilanthiraiyan told Reuters by telephone from the rebels’ northern stronghold.
“It has been happening since independence.” “We will resist in every way.
The Sri Lankan government is already in a full-fledged war.
It takes two to tango,” he added.
“If they accumulate more forces to launch against us, then we will have to make pre-emptive actions in future.” Asked if that would include attacks on the capital, given a spate of suicide attacks and killings in recent months, he said the pre-emptive strikes would be confined to the battlefield.
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