HAVANA (AP):

Ailing leader Fidel Castro returned to public debate yesterday with a column in the Communist Partynewspaper that drew a line between himself and Brazil's leftist president, by denouncing United States (U.S.) promotion of the use of food crops for biofuels.

For the second time in less than a week, Castro chided the adminis-tration of U.S. President George W. Bush for its support of ethanol production for automobiles, a move that the 80-year-old revolutionary said would leave the world's poor hungry.

Cuban dissidents boycott Spanish official

HAVANA (Reuters):

Cuba's leading dissidents, miffed by a rapprochement between Spain and Cuba's communist govern-ment, boycotted meetings with a Spanish official yesterday.

Pro-democracy activists said they felt "insulted" that Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos ended a two-day visit to Havana on Tuesday without meeting with them.

Instead, Moratinos met with Cuba's acting president Raul Castro and left an official in charge of Latin American policy, Javier Sandomingo, to meet with dissi-dents after his departure in an apparent move to avoid upsetting Cuban authorities.