Cuban leader Fidel Castro would resume his work in a few weeks, said Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage on Sunday, according to reports from La Paz, Bolivia's administrative capital.

Lage, who is in Bolivia for a constitutional convention, said Castro was recovering satisfactorily from his surgery to treat gastrointestinal bleeding.

Castro, who will turn 80 on Aug. 13, said in a statement last Monday that the intense agenda of a recent trip to Argentina had "caused an acute intestinal problem, with sustained bleeding, which forced me to undergo a complex surgical operation."

The statement, which was read out by his secretary Carlos Valenciaga on the state television, said he would be "out of power for several weeks" and had temporarily handed the presidency and the post as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba to Raul Castro, the country's defense minister.

Source: Xinhua