Doctors tell Castro to miss birthday party opening

HAVANA, Nov 29 (Reuters) Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said that he was not well enough to attend the opening of several days of events celebrating his 80th birthday.

Castro, who has not appeared in public since he underwent intestinal surgery in late July, said yesterday in a message that was read out to 5,000 supporters and admirers from dozens of countries that doctors had not allowed him to attend a gala in Havana's Karl Marx theater.

''It was only in the Karl Marx Theater that all guests could be seated but, according to the doctors, I was not yet ready for such a challenging engagement,'' he said in the message.

Castro's birthday was August 13 but he postponed celebrations after undergoing emergency surgery that forced him to hand over power temporarily to his brother Raul in late July.

Questions about whether he would be well enough to appear this week have dominated the run up to the event and overshadowed its celebratory intent.

After the release on October 28 of a video that showed a gaunt, shuffling Castro, many Cubans believe he is too old and too ill to resume governing.

Officials said 1,500 guests from 80 countries were to attend the celebrations, including presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rene Preval of Haiti and president-elect Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Castro's top ally and equally fierce critic of the United States, is not expected to make the event because he faces a national election on Sunday.

Due to his illness Castro asked in the summer that the celebration be postponed until December 2, the 50th anniversary of the day he and a group of followers landed in Cuba to start a guerrilla movement that seized power in a 1959 revolution.

REUTERS AKJ ND0910