MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cubans listen to Fidel Castro for first time in 15 months

Ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro telephoned into a television show with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Sunday, in his first live media appearance in Cuba since his health crisis nearly 15 months ago.

The show, which aired in Cuba and Venezuela, marked the first time Cubans had heard Castro's voice live since he fell ill and ceded power to his brother in July 2006. "Everyone is electrified to hear you," Chavez told the convalescing Cuban leader. Castro took part in Chavez's weekly program by telephone in February but that show aired live only in Venezuela. This time, however, he went to great lengths to persuade fellow Cubans and other viewers his appearance was genuine. "I can see you are moving your left hand, and I know you are left-handed," Castro said to Chavez, in an obvious attempt to persuade skeptics that the broadcast was indeed live. Apparently to the same end, the two discussed the most recent oil prices and joked, at one point targeting US President George W. Bush. "This gentleman crosses to the other side of the street if he sees me," Castro said of Bush. "He is too powerful to speak with the devil, with an axis of evil. And you, Hugo, and I represent an axis of evil." "Don't even think of mentioning to anybody, not even as a joke, that I speak to Lucifer," the Cuban leader concluded. But switching to a more serious tone, he argued with satisfaction that "the tyrannical power," a metaphor usually reserved to the United States, "is now facing new multiple Vietnams." Earlier in the show, Chavez showed a new video of Castro taped during a four-hour meeting between them Saturday. Castro, dressed in a red, blue and white sports suit, was shown chatting with Chavez in the 17 minute video. The official communist newspaper Juventud Rebelde published photographs from the meeting Sunday. One photograph showed Castro seated next to Chavez and leafing through a book with a picture of Ernesto "Che" Guevara on its cover. The other showed him standing, shaking hands with his Venezuelan counterpart. Chavez was broadcasting the show from Cuba to mark the 40th anniversary this week of the arrest and execution of revolutionary icon Guevara. As in previous appearances, Castro -- who last month was briefly rumored to be dead -- appeared frail but apparently recovered to some degree from his illness. After admitting he was on medication, Castro signed off from the phone call with the words, "always all the way to victory." The exhortation to fight onward during the revolution was the signoff bused by Che in his letters, and later was adopted by Fidel to encourage Cubans during his government's resistance to US political pressures and American capitalism. The broadcast wrapped up a week of tributes to Che who was honored throughout Latin America on the 40th anniversary of his death. The Argentine-born doctor-turned-guerrilla was executed on October 9, 1967 at the age of 39.