Castro ‘raps economic model’

HAVANA – Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba’s communist economic model doesn’t 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 Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba’s economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” Goldberg wrote yesterday in a post on his Atlantic blog.
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.
Since stepping down from power in 2006, the former president has focused almost entirely on international affairs and said very little about Cuba and its politics, perhaps to limit the perception he was stepping on his brother’s toes.
Goldberg, who travelled to Cuba at Castro’s invitation last week to discuss a recent Atlantic article he wrote about Iran’s nuclear programme, also reported on Tuesday that 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. (AP)