AILING former leader Fidel Castro appeared “very energetic” during a meeting with US Democrats at his home in Havana yesterday.

House of Representatives member Barbara Lee visited Mr Castro a day after she and six other Democrats from the US Congressional Black Caucus met President Raul Castro and other top Cuban officials in a bid to improve relations between the two countries through direct dialogue.

“He seemed very energetic. We met at his house, a house of very modest means. His wife was there, his son was taking photographs of us,” Ms Lee said upon her return after a five-day visit.

Ms Lee and two of her colleagues visited Fidel Castro, 82, who withdrew from public view in July 2006 for health reasons, ceding power to his brother Raul, 77.

“It was a very moving meeting, in some sense, because he was taking notes,” Ms Lee said. “He was very inquisitive, he asked us to send him more information about Dr King Jr. because he reveres Martin Luther King Jr.”

During the meeting with Raul Castro, Ms Lee and her delegation discussed, among other things, establishing a US-Cuban dialogue with no pre-conditions.

Ms Lee said she would convey to the White House the message that the time to talk with Cuba is now.

The visit comes with US President Barack Obama reportedly planning to ease some aspects of the 47-year-old US economic embargo on Cuba.

Mr Obama has also said he was open to new dialogue with US adversaries, including Cuba.

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By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ – 3 hours ago

HAVANA (AP) — Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom apologized to Cuba on Tuesday for his country’s having allowed the CIA to train exiles in the Central American country for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

“Today I want to ask Cuba’s forgiveness for having offered our country, our territory, to prepare an invasion of Cuba,” Colom said during a speech at the University of Havana. “It wasn’t us, but it was our territory.”

He added that he wished to apologize “as president and head of state, and as commander in chief of the Guatemalan army.”

About 1,500 Cuban exiles trained under CIA guidance in Guatemala before invading the island beginning April 17, 1961, in an unsuccessful bid to overthrow Fidel Castro’s communist government.

The invasion ended after less than three days, with about 100 invaders killed and more than 1,000 captured by Cuban forces.

Colom, whose government is considered center-leftist, said he was asking Cuba’s forgiveness as “a sign of solidarity and that times are changing,” and to “reaffirm my idea that Latin America is changing.”

Trained by the CIA in the rural Guatemalan province of Retalhuleu at the height of the Cold War, an invasion force known as the 2506 Brigade, comprising mostly Miami-area Cuban exiles, was determined to overthrow Castro’s government — which had brought the Soviet bloc closer than ever to the continental United States by seizing power in Cuba 28 months before.

The invading forces landed at Playa Larga at the innermost part of the Bay of Pigs, on the southern coast of central Cuba. The fighting later moved south, to Playa Giron, where Castro’s forces triumphed after less than 72 hours of fighting, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy failed to provide air support.

Colom said Tuesday that “Cuba deserves its own destiny, a destiny that you all built with this revolution of 50 years.”

“Defend it,” he said, referring to the guerrilla uprising that brought Castro to power on Jan. 1, 1959. “Defend it like you have always done.”

Like Cubans, Guatemalans harbor a deep resentment toward the United States for past violence. The CIA helped topple the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and Washington backed a series of hardline military and civilian governments during that country’s 36-year civil war, in which 200,000 Guatemalans died or disappeared before peace accords were signed in December 1996.

During a visit to Guatemala in March 1999, President Bill Clinton said any U.S. support given to military forces or intelligence units that engaged in “violent and widespread repression” was wrong. “And the United States must not repeat that mistake.”

During Colom’s state visit to Havana, he awarded his country’s highest honor to Castro, though it was unclear if he would meet with the ailing, 82-year-old former president, who has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006.

The Guatemalan president’s was the latest in a string of recent visits to Havana by regional leaders, including Panama’s Martin Torrijos and Rafael Correa of Ecuador.

Fidel Castro, who ceded power to his younger brother Raul about a year ago, met with two other visiting Latin American presidents, Cristina Fernandez of Argentina and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet. Photographs of him with each of the presidents were later released by their respective governments, and a series of photos featuring Castro and Bachelet appeared in Cuba’s communist newspaper Granma on Tuesday.

By Esteban Israel

HAVANA, Feb 11 (Reuters) – Cuba launched its own variant of the Linux computer operating system this week in the latest front of the communist island’s battle against what it views as U.S. hegemony.

The Cuban variant, called Nova, was introduced at a Havana computer conference on “technological sovereignty” and is central to the Cuban government’s desire to replace the Microsoft software running most of the island’s computers.

The government views the use of Microsoft systems, developed by U.S.-based Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), as a potential threat because it says U.S. security agencies have access to Microsoft codes.

Also, the long-standing U.S. trade embargo against the island makes it difficult for Cubans to get Microsoft software legally and to update it.

“Getting greater control over the informatic process is an important issue,” said Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, who heads a commission pushing Cuba’s migration to free software.

Cuba, which is 90 miles (144 km) from Florida, has been resisting U.S. domination in one form or another since Fidel Castro took over Cuba in a 1959 revolution.

Younger brother Raul Castro replaced the ailing 82-year-old leader last year, but the U.S.-Cuba conflict goes on, now in the world of software.

According to Hector Rodriguez, dean of the School of Free Software at Cuba’s University of Information Sciences, about 20 percent of computers in Cuba, where computer sales to the public began only last year, are currently using Linux.

Nova is Cuba’s own configuration of Linux and bundles various applications of the operating system.

Rodriguez said several government ministries and the Cuban university system have made the switch to Linux but there has been resistance from government companies concerned about its compatibility with their specialized applications.

“I would like to think that in five years our country will have more than 50 percent migrated (to Linux),” he said.

Unlike Microsoft, Linux is free and has open access that allows users to modify its code to fit their needs.

“Private software can have black holes and malicious codes that one doesn’t know about,” Rodriguez said. “That doesn’t happen with free software.”

Apart from security concerns, free software better suits Cuba’s world view, he said.

“The free software movement is closer to the ideology of the Cuban people, above all for the independence and sovereignty.” (Editing by Jeff Franks and Bill Trott) -Reuters

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