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 The 81-year-old Castro, with his talent for energizing crowds, was always the central figure at such regional events. But his place at the Petrocaribe summit will be taken by his dour younger brother Raul, who has headed Cuba's provisional government since Fidel underwent intestinal surgery in July 2006.
The elder Castro even indicated in an ambiguous statement earlier this week that he could be thinking about permanent retirement. Chavez discussed the summit with Castro during an "emotional and fraternal" 2 1/2-hour meeting Thursday, official media reported Friday.
Now the loquacious Venezuelan president is filling the rhetorical vacuum as he leads Petrocaribe, a group of 16 Latin American and Caribbean nations created as an alternative to Washington's unsuccessful Free Trade Area for the Americas.
Venezuela provides about $5 billion to the region annually through long-term preferential financing under Petrocaribe and other similar initiatives, according to Chavez, who promotes the pact as part of a larger effort to create a "confederation of republics" from Argentina to Cuba independent of U.S. influence.
Chavez will also restart an oil refinery Friday that his country helped Cuba renovate after it was left idle following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the latest evidence of how Venezuela has replaced the support Cuba once enjoyed from Moscow's communist government.
With Venezuela's assistance, more than $136 million in improvements have been made to the refinery, which will employ 1,200 people when fully operational.
Largely idle since the Soviet Union's collapse ended billions of dollars in annual subsidies to Cuba, the refinery is expected to process 65,000 barrels of crude daily and then increase capacity, eventually pushing Cuba's overall daily production to more than 100,000 barrels a day.
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 Outside the refinery's main gates late Thursday, officials set up more than 2,000 plastic chairs and a stage for Friday's early evening ceremony following the daylong summit to discuss petroleum deals to benefit smaller countries in the region.
The refinery's towering gray smokestack, painted with red and white stripes, loomed in the distance. The Cuban press reported that it is the island's tallest, measuring 630 feet.
Venezuela, the fourth-largest supplier of crude to the United States, also sends nearly 100,000 barrels of subsidized oil a day to Cuba. In exchange it gets social services, including thousands of Cuban doctors who treat poor patients in the South American nation. Fidel Castro recently wrote that overall annual trade with Venezuela has reached $7 billion.
Dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe wrote in an essay distributed to international journalists this week that Chavez's recent failure to persuade Venezuelans to let him run for re-election indefinitely should serve as a warning that Cuba needs to become more economically independent.
"If the (Cuban) government loses Venezuela, it will have no where else to turn," he wrote.
Top leaders from 12 countries from around the region are expected including Chavez and Raul Castro.
Presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Rene Preval of Haiti and Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic, were attending as well as the leaders of Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Jamaica.
Lower-ranking officials from Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Honduras and Guatemala were attending the sessions as observers.
[Associated
Press; By ANITA SNOW]
Copyright 2007 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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