Cubans unsure Castro will appear

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cubans prepared on Monday for massive May Day workers' parades, unsure whether Fidel Castro would resume governing the country with his first public appearance since falling seriously ill nine months ago.

Hundreds of thousands of workers are expected to march through Revolution Square, the political heart of the communist state Castro built 90 miles (145 km) from the United States after a 1959 revolution.

Castro gave no indication he would attend the rally in an editorial column distributed by the government that encouraged workers to protest the U.S. release of a Cuban exile wanted for bomb attacks against Cuba.

In his fourth column in a month, the 80-year-old Cuban leader called the former CIA agent released April 19 on bail pending trial on immigration charges a "monster of terrorism."

Senior government officials could not say whether Castro would show up in public for the first time since he underwent emergency intestinal surgery and handed over power temporarily to his brother Raul on July 31.

"I cannot confirm or deny he will be there. I haven't the least idea," Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly and one of Castro's closest aides, said Monday.

It would be the first time in four decades Castro has missed the Workers' Day rally, which this year will denounce Washington for refusing to extradite Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Castro exile accused of downing a Cuban airliner in 1976.

"I don't think he will show up," said Yasmin, an economics student at Havana University. "They say he is recovering, but one thing is to speak on the telephone and another to spend an hour in the sun."