Chavez, Castro discuss food, fuel crises ... meet for three hours

EFE News Service: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez spoke for three hours with Fidel Castro about the worldwide energy, food and financial crises, Cuban state media reported Tuesday. The visiting head of state also met with Cuban President Raul Castro and other top officials.

The communique said that Chaávez met with Fidel Castro "shortly after" arriving in Havana Monday afternoon, and that "for three hours they shared opinions about subjects of great importance such as the food crisis, the financial crisis and the international energy situation."

"They also exchanged views on the situation in Venezuela and the positive moment that the Bolivarian revolution is experiencing with the strengthening of the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and the process leading up to the regional elections (next November), the bulletin said.

Fidel Castro, set to turn 82 in August, is recovering from an intestinal illness and has not appeared in public since July 2006. The latest photographs to be released date from mid-January, when Fidel received Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

With Raul Castro, who succeeded his older brother as president earlier this year, Chavez attended a ceremony Monday night honoring members of the Marti Medical Mission, a group of Cuban doctors who have completed five years of working in Venezuela. Cuba pays for some of the petroleum it receives from oil-rich Venezuela by providing professionals to staff social programs in the Andean nation. "The two presidents gave a brotherly greeting to the guests of honor and had a lively conversation with them on a variety of subjects," the communique said.

Chavez had announced upon his arrival in Havana that he would analyze with the Castro brothers "the mother of all crises," as he called the current increase in world food and fuel prices.
On his arrival at Jose Marti International Airport, Chavez said that Fidel Castro is "alive and well, thinking, writing and dictating strategic guidelines that are very important for Cuba" and for the Americas. The leftist Venezuelan president said that "Fidel is the father of all of Latin America's revolutionary men and women."