Cuba quickly dismissed another US call for Cuban democracy as Fidel Castro's government began to break the silence that followed his surgery and provisional hand-over of power to brother Raul.
Neither Castro brother has been seen in public since Fidel's operation on Monday for internal bleeding, but two members of the cabinet gave assurances that all was well with the Communist island and its 79-year-old leader.
In Miami, Cuban exile leaders who earlier in the week declared the beginning of the end of the Castro era began to come to grips with the idea that their nearly half-century wait for Fidel's demise may not be over.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a message beamed to Cuba on Friday night, told the island's residents that "much is changing there" and now was the time to push for democracy.
"We will stand with you to secure your rights - to speak as you choose, to think as you please, to worship as you wish, and to choose your leaders, freely and fairly, in democratic elections," she said in a broadcast on the US-funded Radio Marti network.
But Cuba's Minister of Culture, Abel Prieto, told reporters at a Havana event that Rice's message, which followed a similar statement by President George W. Bush on Thursday, would fall on deaf ears.
"Nobody in Cuba is going to listen to a message that comes from a functionary of a foreign government. That has no value for Cubans," he said in some of the first government comments since Castro's surgery.
Prieto also said the Cuban government was functioning well with Fidel Castro recovering and his 75-year-old brother at the helm, despite suggestions from the United States that things were in flux. Castro has led Cuba for 47 years, since he swept to power in a 1959 revolution.
United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan, during a trip to the Dominican Republic on Friday, said there were "indications" Castro was recovering and wished the Cuban president well.
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