Fidel Castro breaks silence to praise Obama

By Jeff Franks - HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba's Fidel Castro praised U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday for his "noble intentions" but said in his first opinion column in five weeks that the new American leader had many questions to answer.
Castro's prolonged silence after months of prolific column writing had contributed to speculation that the ailing 82-year-old was on his death bed.
He did not disclose the reason that he had not written a column, or "reflection" as he calls them, since December 15, after averaging nine a month in 2008.
Castro wrote that he had met with Argentine President Christine Fernandez on Wednesday near the end of her three-day visit to Havana and told her the revolution that put him in power on January 1, 1959, had outlasted 10 U.S. presidents.
He spoke of his admiration for Obama, who took office on Tuesday, replacing George W. Bush, and is the United States' first black president.
"I expressed that personally I had not the least doubt of the honesty with which Obama, the 11th president since January 1, 1959, expressed his ideas, but in spite of his noble intentions there remained many questions to answer," he said.
One question, Castro said, was "how can a wasteful and consumerist system par excellence preserve the environment?"

read more digg story

Fidel Castro Feels Obama Can Engage in Talks Despite Hillary

Fidel Castro the former president of Cuba stated that the government was interested in talks with the US president-elect Barack Obama to resolve the issues related to the 46 year old trade blockade. He further added that the Cuban heads were prepared to hold talks with Obama whichever place he deemed right. This was contrary to the statement given by his brother and current president of Cuba Raul Castro some time back in an interview to The Nation magazine that he would like to meet him at a neutral venue.
read more digg story

AP/NPR- Raul Castro to Sean Penn: He'd Meet Obama at Gitmo

Raul Castro told actor Sean Penn that he would be willing to meet President-elect Obama at Guantanamo.
HAVANA November 27, 2008, 02:49 am ET · Cuban President Raul Castro said in an interview released Wednesday that he would like to meet President-elect Barack Obama on "neutral ground" — and he suggested the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
The Cuban leader's offer came in a rare interview in Havana with actor-director Sean Penn, who wrote about it for the Dec. 15 edition of The Nation magazine. The article was released on the magazine's Web site Wednesday.

read more digg story

Cuba remembers Che Guevara 40 years after his fall

SANTA CLARA, Cuba (Reuters) - Communist Cuba paid tribute on Monday to its
poster boy, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, 40 years after the guerrilla fighter was
captured and executed in Bolivia.

The man he helped to power in Cuba's 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro, was too
ill to attend a memorial rally at the mausoleum where Guevara's remains were
placed when they were dug up from an unmarked Bolivian grave in 1997.

But Castro marked the anniversary in a newspaper column written from his sickbed, saying the Argentine-born doctor sowed the seeds of social conscience in Latin America and the world, and describing him as a flower prematurely cut from its stem.

"I make a halt in day-to-day combat to bow my head, with respect and gratitude, before the exceptional fighter who fell 40 years ago," Castro wrote.

Guevara was captured by CIA-backed Bolivian soldiers on October 8, 1967, and was shot the next day in a schoolhouse. His bullet-ridden body, eyes wide open, was put on display in a hospital laundry room and later buried in an unmarked grave. He was 39.

About 10,000 Cuban workers and students gathered on Monday before a monument of the guerrilla fighter carrying a rifle in Santa Clara, the city in central Cuba that Guevara "liberated" in 1958 in the decisive battle of the Cuban revolution.

"Che was loved, in spite of being stern and demanding. We would give our life for him," said 80-year-old Tomas Alba, who fought under Guevara's command. A banner proclaimed him as a "true example of revolutionary virtues."

Cuba remembers Che Guevara 40 years after his fall Top News Reuters.com

Technorati tags: revolutionary, Che Guevara, Cuba, communism, memorial