Castro looks healthier in TV interview

Havana - Speaking slowly and focusing on past memories rather than his recovery and future, a healthier looking Fidel Castro appeared on Cuban television Tuesday, giving the world its first long look at him since he fell ill and gave up power last summer.

A family watches a previously recorded interview with Cuba's President Fidel Castro on state TV in Havana, June 5, 2007.[AP]

The 80-year-old Castro's beard and hair were well-trimmed and he looked rested and alert -- no longer the picture of a man on the verge of death. But he did not speak of international issues and made no mention of any plans to return to running Cuba again.

Often shaking his arm and extending a finger for emphasis, Castro spoke for more than half an hour about Vietnam and his weekend meeting with the chief of that country's Communist Party, Nong Duc Manh.

"How hot it was," said Castro, recalling a 1973 visit to Vietnam, when the US was still backing the south in a war there that the north eventually won. "It was like you jumped in a pool with clothes on," he said of the humidity, which can also be brutal in Havana.

But his train of thought was often harder to follow than it had been before his illness. And the most notable thing about the hour-long interview with Randy Alonso, host of the government's nightly "Round Table" program, was how much stronger and healthier Castro appeared than in previous glimpses of him.

Recovering in an undisclosed location, Castro has not been seen in public since before July 31, when he announced he was temporarily ceding power to a provisional government headed by his 76-year-old brother Raul, the defense minister. Life on the island has been little changed since, and top officials insist months Castro's health is improving.

Sometimes grinning in awe and sometimes listening intently, Alonso got Castro talking by asking open-ended questions in a soft tone to start.

After a few minutes, Castro needed little prompting, however, and began reading a tedious string of statistics about the number of teachers and other basic services in Vietnam from a notebook in his lap.

It took him about 40 minutes to mention US President Bush, and then only in the context of international meetings about the environment.

In an essay signed by Castro last week, he quoted the US president as saying, "I'm a hard-line president and I'm only waiting for Castro to die." But he made no mention of that claim in the latest interview.

"I'm not the first, nor will I be the last, that Bush has ordered to be deprived of life," Castro wrote in the essay. But he provided few details about when the US president allegedly made the comments.

In recent weeks, Castro has written a string of essays including the one about Bush's alleged comments. Others have blasted a US-backed plan to use food crops for biofuels. He promised he would write more in the future during Tuesday's interview.

Just days ago, Castro grumbled in his writings about having to cut his hair and trim his beard for official photos and suggested he was happy with the role of columnist and elder statesmen and in no hurry to retake Cuba's presidency.

Wearing another of the track suits that have replaced olive-green military uniforms as his trademark garb since he fell ill, Castro looked stronger, more upbeat and chattier in video clips of his meeting Saturday with Manh.

It was the first official videotape of Castro released since a January meeting in Havana with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and the first still photographs of him since a meeting with Chinese Communist Party leader Wu Guanzheng in April.