Castro and Chavez swap jokes

(22 Jul 2006) SHOTLIST
++SOUND AS INCOMING++
AP Television News
1. Exterior of Mercosur conference hall
2. Security on site
3. Photo opportunity with presidents
POOL
4. Wide of conference table, UPSOUND: applause
5. Delegates applauding as Cuban President Fidel Castro is welcomed
6. Wide of table
7. Close-up of Castro winking at his audience
8. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez laughing
9. Argentine President Nestor Kirchner laughing
10. Mercosur flags
11. Bolivian President Evo Morales
12. UPSOUND: (Spanish) Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President asking Castro why he's looking at him like that
13. UPSOUND: (Spanish) Fidel Castro, Cuban President "Hugo, I'm listening to you almost as if I were your student."
14. Castro laughing
15. Wide of meeting
16. Morales smiling
17. Wide of meeting
STORYLINE:
Mercosur's previous image as a rather sleepy and somewhat ineffective Latin American customs union got an image revamp on Friday swapping usual tariff meetings for hot political debate with the region's most controversial leaders.
Venezuela - South America's No. 3 economy and world oil power - formally joined the group led by numbers one and two, Brazil and Argentina.
And Mercosur leaders were concluding a deal Friday to foster greater trade with Cuba, despite a 45-year-old US embargo of the island.
Fidel Castro, who arrived on Thursday, after weeks of speculation, caused a media frenzy when he arrived at the summit on Friday.
Later he swapped jokes with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, turning the usual Mercosur event into a series of comic exchanges.
Now 47 years in power, Castro marks his 80th birthday Aug. 13 as one of world's longest-ruling leaders, in charge of the only communist state in the Western Hemisphere.
Once confined to the Southern Cone nations of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, Mercosur now ranges north to Venezuela's Caribbean coast.

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