• Submitted by: admin
• Arts and Culture
• Politics and Government
• 06 / 06 / 2007

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Despite perpetually strained US-Cuban ties, the US NBC television network for the first time Tuesday broadcast a live program from Havana, where the communist government controls all media.

The "Today" broadcast included reports on present-day Cuba, its political future and how the 40-plus-year US economic embargo has impacted the island.

NBC said it was unable to get an interview with ailing President Fidel Castro, 80, or his brother, Raul, 76, who has been running Cuba provisionally since his brother underwent gastrointestinal surgery in July of last year.

US policy for almost five decades has presumed that once Fidel Castro was not in power, the Americas' only one-party communist regime would collapse.

But in an interview with Ricardo Alarcon, the head of Cuba's National Assembly and the regime's number three official, Alarcon underscored that "to imagine that the revolution ends with its founder or its main protagonist is wrong.