MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Castro interview upcoming on Cuban TV

Pte.Fidel Castro with Chief Nong Duc Manh

The latest video clip of Fidel Castro was shown Monday on state television to promote an interview of the convalescing leader to air Tuesday, his first formal interview since taking ill 10 months ago.

The brief clip aired Monday showed Castro and the host of the nightly "Round Table" TV program, Randy Alonso, sitting across from each other in rattan chairs in an interview evidently conducted over the weekend around the same time Castro met the visiting Vietnamese Communist Party chief. Alonso said his interview with 80-year-old Cuban leader would be shown the following night on the same show. In the interview, Castro comments on his meeting with the visiting Vietnamese delegation and "other themes of interest," Alonso said. Official photographs and a videotape of Castro's two-hour meeting Saturday with Vietnam's Nong Duc Manh were released by the government on Sunday. Castro looked stronger and more vibrant in the two-and-a-half-minute clip with Manh, in which he wears a red track suit. The new images of Castro meeting with Manh were the first official videotape of the ailing leader released since a meeting in Havana in late January with his friend and ally Hugo Chavez, and the first still photographs released of him since a meeting with the Chinese Communist Party leader Wu Guanzheng in April. Castro has not been seen in public since he announced on July 31 that he had undergone emergency intestinal surgery and was temporarily ceding power to his brother Raul, the Defense Minister, who turned 76 on Sunday. Castro's exact ailment and condition remain state secrets, but he is largely believed to suffer from diverticular disease, which forms sacs in the colon that can become inflamed and bleed. Senior Cuban officials have repeatedly said Castro is on the mend.