HAVANA – Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that his country’s communist economic model does not work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlanticmagazine, asked whether Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries. Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us any more," Goldberg wrote in a post on his Atlanticblog.
He said Castro made the comment casually over lunch following a long talk about the Middle East, and did not elaborate.
The Cuban government had no immediate comment on Goldberg’s account.
Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, who accompanied Goldberg on the trip, confirmed the Cuban leader’s comment. She said she took the remark to be in line with current leader Raul Castro’s call for gradual but widespread reform.
Since stepping down from power in 2006, the ex-president has focused almost entirely on international affairs and said very little about Cuba and its politics – perhaps to limit any perception he was stepping on his brother’s toes.
Goldberg also reported that Fidel Castro questioned his own actions during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, including his recommendation to Soviet leaders that they use nuclear weapons against the United States.
Fidel Castro stepped down temporarily in July 2006 because of a serious illness. – (AP)