Castro cites inability to campaign

HAVANA — Fidel Castro said yesterday he is not yet healthy enough to address Cuba’s people in person and can’t campaign for Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Also yesterday, Vatican radio said Pope Benedict XVI’s right-hand man, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, will visit Cuba next month, Agence France-Presse reported from Vatican City.

“I am not physically able to speak directly to the citizens of the municipality where I was nominated for our elections,” the ailing 81-year-old Mr. Castro wrote in an essay published by state news media.

Hours later, government television broadcast images of a frail but upbeat Mr. Castro meeting Brazil’s visiting President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Tuesday.

The first video of Mr. Castro in three months showed him sitting and listening with a finger pressed to his forehead, then later standing and speaking, waving a finger for emphasis.

“I have felt very good, very good,” Mr. Castro says after exchanging a warm hug with Mr. Lula da Silva — the only audible comment on the 60 seconds of footage.

Mr. Lula da Silva, a leftist admirer of the Cuban revolution, said Mr. Castro’s health “was a nice surprise.”

Speaking to reporters at the airport just before leaving the island, Mr. Lula da Silva said Mr. Castro appeared healthy enough to return to politics.

“I think Fidel is ready to take over his historic political role in this globalized world, in humanity,” Mr. Lula da Silva said. He did not suggest what that role might be.

Mr. Castro has not been seen in public since July 2006, when emergency intestinal surgery forced him to cede power to a provisional government headed by his brother, Raul, five years his junior. Despite stepping aside, the elder Castro has retained his position as head of the Council of State, Cuba’s supreme governing body.

In yesterday’s essay, he expressed frustration with the fact he can no longer give the kind of hours-long speeches for which he was noted.

“I do what I can: I write. For me, this is a new experience: writing is not the same as speaking,” he wrote.

Raul Castro addressed a crowd of voters Dec. 24 in the brothers’ home district in the eastern city of Santiago, saying he was filling in for his brother. But yesterday’s essay was the first time the older Castro acknowledged he is not well enough to campaign for himself — though there was no sign he would pull out of the election.

Re-election to the legislature, or National Assembly, is a necessary step if Fidel Castro is to continue as head of the Council of State.

According to the Agence Frannce-Presse report, Cardinal Bertone will visit Cuba Feb. 20-26 to mark a decade since his predecessor’s trip there.

Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, is expected to meet Raul Castro as well as members of the Cuban government.

He also will celebrate a Mass in Havana Cathedral and will visit the city of Santa Clara, where he will inaugurate a monument in memory of Pope John Paul II, who visited Cuba in January 1998.