Medvedev visits Cold War ally Castro

HAVANA - Russia's president met with ailing revolutionary leader Fidel Castro yesterday, winding up a visit aimed at freshening relations with his country's old Cold War ally and raising Moscow's profile across the rest of the Latin America.

Dmitry Medvedev spent hours talking and sightseeing with President Raul Castro before meeting privately with his 82-year-old older brother.

Medvedev and Raul Castro laid a wreath at a monument to Soviet soldiers who died while serving in Cuba in the early 1960s, a symbol of Cuba's once-prominent part in the communist bloc and the history of its ties to Russia.

Wearing a gray suit instead of his olive-green army uniform and clutching Medvedev's arm, Raul Castro shouted to television cameras, "It has been a magnificent visit and now he will see Fidel."

Medvedev said he and Raul Castro had discussed economic and "military-technical cooperation" - apparently arms sales - "as well as security and regional cooperation."

Russian officials deny that Medvedev's four-nation trip is meant to provoke the United States, but the chat with Fidel Castro capped meetings with Washington's staunchest opponents in the region. Details about the meeting with the older Castro were not immediately available.

Medvedev toured a visiting Russian warship on Thursday with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and earlier met with Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, saying Russia might participate in a socialist trade bloc founded by Chávez and Cuba.

Medvedev also signed deals with Brazil and Peru, part of an effort to strengthen Russia's political, economic, and military connections across a region long dominated by US influence.

The Russian president's Latin America tour is in some ways a response to US moves in eastern Europe, where Russia sees its security threatened by US plans to build a missile-defense system in former Soviet satellite states.

ASSOCIATED PRESS