A Spanish surgeon who has just examined Fidel Castro said yesterday the Cuban leader was recovering from a digestive illness and did not have cancer.

"He asks every day to return to work, but doctors advise him not to," Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido told a news conference in Madrid after returning from Cuba.

Garcia Sabrido, who flew to Cuba last week to examine the 80-year-old leader, said he did not need surgery but required muscular rehabilitation and a strict diet in order to recover.

"He does not have cancer, he has a problem with his digestive system," Garcia Sabrido said after the news conference.

Castro's disappearance from the public eye after emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding in July sparked frenzied speculation about his state of health.

US intelligence chief John Negroponte told the Washington Post on December 15 that Castro was likely to die within months.

But Garcia Sabrido said Castro did not need more surgery.

"He has his intellectual activity intact, I'd say fantastic given the recovery from the previous surgery," he said.

Defence Minister Raul Castro, 75, took over the government temporarily on July 31 when his more famous brother's operation to relinquish power, for the first time since Cuba's 1959 revolution.

Video images released on October 28 showed the once-towering revolutionary diminished to a frail and shuffling old man.

US congressman William Delahunt, one of the leaders of a delegation that visited Cuba this month, said he had concluded from discussions with officials there that if Castro did resume a political role, it would probably be setting broad policy, not governing on a day-to-day basis.

(China Daily 12/27/2006 page7)