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 Brazil newspaper says Fidel Castro has cancer


Rio de Janeiro, (EFE).- The Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo said Saturday that the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is working with the hypothesis that Cuban President Fidel Castro "is sick" and that the cancer he is suffering could keep him from returning to office.

"Cuban authorities told the president and the Workers Party (PT) that the dictator has cancer and that even if he recovers he might not return to power," the newspaper said without mentioning sources.
"They said that the dictator might be kept from returning to power even though he recovers from the illness, a malignant abdominal tumor, according to the version with which the Brazilian government is working," said the article signed by journalist Kennedy Alencar, Folha de Sao Paulo's correspondent in Brasilia.
"'It looks like we are going to lose our friend,' Lula told an assistant after being informed of the dictator's critical state of health," the article said.
The story said that "word from Havana received confidentially indicates that Castro is very ill." According to the daily, Lula was deeply moved and asked his collaborators for discretion and told his friends he is hoping for Castro's recovery. The Cuban leader will be 80 on Aug. 13.
The daily recalled some of the "old ties of politics and friendship" which through the years the leftist Workers Party of Lula - a former Marxist unionist firebrand - has cultivated with the Havana government. In a statement read on Cuban state television Monday night, Castro announced he was ceding power on a provisional basis to 75-year-old brother Raul while he recovers from surgery to stop intestinal bleeding.