Chavez says Castro almost fully recovered

HAVANA, June 13 (Reuters) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his mentor, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, has almost fully recovered from his health crisis and is ready to reappear in uniform, a symbol of his resuming command.

''Fidel already has his uniform hanging there. He looks at it out of the corner of his eye,'' Chavez joked today in a speech in Havana.

Shedding the track suit he has used since bowel surgery sidelined him from power last year for his trademark military fatigues would signal that Castro was back in command in Cuba.

Chavez huddled with the 80-year-old Castro for six hours yesterday to review advances in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, a leftist alliance they forged to oppose US-backed policies.

''Each day we will be more peoples and nations to defeat the hegemony of American imperialism,'' he said of the alliance that now includes the leftist governments Bolivia and Nicaragua.

But Chavez, whose critics say is turning his oil-producing nation into a one-party state that curbs press freedom, said he is not copying Cuban communism.

The former military coup leader who was elected to power in 1998 said Venezuela was building its own brand of 21st century socialism.

''There is no copy, no formula. Each nation builds its own model, and that's what we Venezuelans are doing today, inspired by the Cuban revolution,'' he said in a speech.

Chavez, with Cuba's acting President Raul Castro at his side, unveiled a statue in Havana of Venezuelan independence hero Francisco de Miranda, a forerunner of Latin America's struggle against Spanish colonial rule in the 19th Century.

But it was for his ally and ideological beacon Castro that he had his most heartfelt words, calling him ''father.'' Castro has not been seen in public in more than 10 months.

In a taped television interview last week, he looked much healthier that he did when Chavez last visited him in January.

''Just to see him almost totally recovered, his good spirits and perennial intelligence, made me feel relieved, happy, very optimistic.'' he said.

Chavez, who has kept Cuba's economy afloat with cheap supplies of oil running at 92,000 barrels a day, said a good venue for Castro's reappearance would be the opening of a Cuban refinery scheduled for the end of the year.

Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA is overhauling the Soviet-built refinery in Cienfuegos on Cuba's South Coast.

Chavez proposed building a petrochemical complex at the refinery using Venezuelan gas.

Reuters AKD VP0145