Venezuelan leftist President Nicolas Maduro was seeing arriving in Cuba on Saturday and the presidents of Nicaragua, China and Bolivia extended their congratulations to Castro.
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Omara Garcia/Courtesy of AIN/Handout via REUTERSATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY.Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has marked his 90th birthday by taking a sideswipe at US President Barack Obama.
“I laughed with the Machiavellian plans several U.S. presidents had to eliminate me in any way”, said the Cuban leader.
“I don’t know whether I will be able to wish him a happy birthday”.
Increasingly frail, Castro had last made an official appearance at the Communist Party Congress in April. After the USA president visited Cuba back in March for what was seen by some as a giant step toward rebuilding diplomatic relations between the two countries, which have been at odds since Fidel took control in 1959, the elder Castro soon took to Cuba’s state-run newspaper, Granma, expressing his cynicism toward the visit.
Castro, who stepped down from power in 2008, after suffering from a serious gastro intestinal illness, wrote further: “Modern medical techniques have allowed me to scrutinise the universe”. He touched on his father’s death shortly before his own victory in overthrowing U.S-backed strongman Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Mr Obama had apparently angered the former leader when he urged Cubans to look toward the future during a landmark trip to the country in March, which heralded a watershed moment in relations between the two nations.
Mr Castro went on to blast Barack Obama for the United States president’s speech in May when he visited Hiroshima, site of the world’s first atomic bombing at the end of World War Two. “We don’t need the empire to give us anything”, Castro wrote at the time.
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro makes rare public appearance to mark The Cuban government has taken a relatively low-key approach to Castro’s birthday, in comparison with the large-scale gatherings that had been planned for his 80th.
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As for President Obama, Castro said that when he visited Hiroshima in May, the American president should have apologized for the US use of a nuclear weapon there in 1941. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Cubans are migrating to the United States, hollowing out the ranks of highly educated professionals.
