By Jeff Franks
HAVANA (Reuters) - A U.S. journalist who reported that Fidel Castro told him the Cuban economic model no longer works expressed surprise on Monday that the former Cuban leader is now saying his words were misinterpreted.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly magazine, said Castro, 84, had made similar statements before and that economic changes under way on the communist-led island made it "a truism that the Cuban model isn't working."
Goldberg wrote in a blog last week that he asked Castro in an interview two weeks ago in Havana if the Cuban economic model was still worth exporting and he replied, "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."
Castro denounced Goldberg in a speech on Friday, saying he was not misquoted, but misunderstood.
"The reality is that my response means exactly the opposite," he said. "My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn't work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious."
But Goldberg said he believes he got it right.
"I don't know how you can interpret that as its opposite," he told reporters on a conference call from Washington. "Of course, I was somewhat surprised by his speech."
Castro's comment provoked an international reaction with some interpreting it as a rejection of the communism he installed after taking power in a 1959 revolution, and others as an indication of support for economic reforms being implemented by his younger brother, President Raul Castro.
Goldberg theorized that Castro may have been testing the waters to see how the idea of Cuban change would be received.
TRIAL BALLOON
"We see this in Washington all the time. Somebody floats a trial balloon, it unsettles some people, so they walk it back a little bit," he said.
"I think the underlying reality supports absolutely that the Cuban government has recognized that the Cuban model doesn't work, so they're looking for another model," he said.
Raul Castro, who succeeded his brother as president in 2008, has introduced reforms aimed at increasing productivity while preserving Cuban communism.
On Monday, it was announced that 500,000 state workers would be laid off by March and new non-government jobs created in the biggest shift to the private sector since the 1960s.
Goldberg said Castro's comment came during lunch, not the formal part of his interviews with the man who ruled Cuba for 49 years before health problems led to his resignation.
Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in Washington who accompanied Goldberg to Cuba and on Monday's call, said Castro's criticism of the blog was aimed at "domestic constituents."
"He wanted to say that 'although we're changing our model that doesn't mean we're importing U.S.-style capitalism," she said.
Goldberg said the resurgent Castro, whom he described in his blog as frail but lucid and energetic, is "trying to figure out what role he can play."
"He is not seizing power back or asking power back from his brother."
(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
