Rumours Rife As Castro Misses Celebrations and Celebrities

Fidel Castro has failed to appear at the start of his delayed week-long birthday celebrations, igniting fresh speculation about his health and disappointing an A-list of Latin American celebrities and politicians invited to Cuba.

A message from the Cuban leader read to 5,000 guests at a Havana theatre on Tuesday said he had not recovered from the illness which in July forced him to withdraw from the public eye and transfer power to his brother, Raul.

"I direct myself to you, intellectuals and prestigious personalities of the world, with a dilemma," said the note. "I could not meet with you in a small locale, only in the Karl Marx Theatre where all the visitors would fit, and I was not yet in condition, according to the doctors, to face such a colossal encounter."

It concluded: "My very close friends, who have done me the honour of visiting our country, I sign off with the great pain of not having been able to personally give thanks and hugs to each and every one of you."

The note did not elaborate on the nature of the illness nor say whether the 80-year-old host will attend the climax of celebrations on Saturday when a military parade in the capital will honour his birthday as well as the 50th anniversary of the start of his communist revolution.

The theatre guests responded with a standing ovation, and luminaries such as the Argentinian footballer Maradona, the Colombian Nobel laureate, Gabriel García Márquez, and President Evo Morales of Bolivia, were still expected to arrive over the next few days.

Mr Castro turned 80 on August 13 but delayed celebrations until this week, the anniversary of his 1956 landing, to have time to recover from surgery for intestinal bleeding. Officials say he is getting better but refuse to identify the illness, which along with his location is a state secret.

His non-appearance on Tuesday will bolster rumours that the survivor of countless US assassination plots has terminal cancer and will succumb by 2007. Video footage released last month showed Mr Castro looking frail and pale, though still with his beard, suggesting no chemotherapy.

Acting president Raul Castro, 75, a long-time defence minister, has kept a low profile and ruled with a cabal of senior colleagues, a skilfully handled transition which has kept the US guessing and allowed Cubans to grow accustomed to the possibility that Fidel Castro may never return to power.

Although the economy has recovered from its 1990s crash, poverty, corruption and dissent will leave the regime vulnerable without its charismatic communist leader.

Mr Castro disembarked from a yacht on December 2 1956 and led ashore 82 guerrillas, including Ché Guevara, who against all the odds toppled the dictator Fulgencio Batista three years later.

Art exhibitions marking the event will give way on Saturday to a military parade involving missile launchers, fighter jets and columns of troops.