Castro battling cancer and unlikely to live through 2007, say US officials

THE UNITED States government believes Fidel Castro’s health is deteriorating and that the Cuban dictator is unlikely to live through 2007.

That dire view was reinforced last week when Cuba’s foreign minister backed away from his earlier prediction that the ailing Mr Castro would return to power by early December.

“It’s a subject on which I don’t want to speculate,” Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told The Associated Press in the Cuban capital, Havana.