Castro recovering well, ready to play baseball: Chavez

HAVANA: Cuba's President Fidel Castro has recovered so well from surgery that he is now strong enough to play baseball; his Venezuelan counterpart joked after meeting the pajama-clad convalescent strongman.

"He is more alive than ever, he walks, he sings and he is even ready to play baseball," Hugo Chavez told journalists after a private meeting with Castro at an undisclosed location where the Cuban leader is recovering from an intestinal operation he underwent in July.

"He looks better every time," said Chavez, who has visited the ailing 80-year-old on several occasions in recent weeks.

State-run television showed pictures of Thursday's meeting, in which Castro, clad in Burgundy pajamas and a dark bathrobe, was seen standing and smiling.

The meeting took place as developing world leaders gathered in Havana for a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

Castro has said he would meet dignitaries of the summit, which concludes on Saturday.

His first guest from the NAM gathering was Argentine lawmaker Miguel Bonasso, a friend and staunch admirer who said after Wednesday's meeting that the communist leader was "as lucid and sharp as ever."

Writing in the Argentine Pagina12 daily, Bonasso quoted Castro as telling him: "I lost 19 kilograms... But I'm putting the weight back on. Nearly half what I lost already."