HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Fidel
                  Castro of Cuba paid a surprise joint visit to young shipwreck survivor Elian
                  Gonzalez at his hometown school, authorities said on Thursday.

                  "Stung by curiosity, the South African leader Thabo Mbeki did not want to
                  miss the miracle of personally meeting Elian Gonzalez," the ruling Communist
                  Party's daily, Granma said, next to a photo of Mbeki with his hand on Elian's
                  shoulder as Castro bent towards him at the school in Cardenas.

                  Other than Castro, Mbeki was believed to be the highest- level world figure to
                  have met Elian, the 7-year-old at the center of a custody dispute between his
                  Miami and Cuban relatives between November 1999 and June 2000.

                  Granma said Mbeki and Castro first met Elian's relatives, then showed "a rather paternal
                  tenderness" during the visit late Wednesday to the Marcelo Salado school where they watched Elian
                  "dancing happily" in an activity with other pupils.

                  "With joy in their faces, both presidents appreciated the dance group's act in which the
                  little Cardenas boy was dancing, and with whom they held an animated dialogue afterwards,"
                  another state daily, Juventud Rebelde, said.

                  Foreign media were not invited to the event in Cardenas, a coastal town about a
                  2-hour drive east of Havana.

                  Critics of Castro in Florida's large anti-communist Cuban- American community
                  say he has turned Elian into a political trophy, but Havana insists the boy has
                  been treated with discretion and successfully reinserted into normal life.

                  After surviving a November, 1999, shipwreck that killed his mother and 12 other
                  would-be migrants to the United States, Elian was picked up at sea and taken in
                  by his U.S. family.

                  That led to a custody battle -- pitting Castro against his arch-enemies in Florida
                  -- that the boy's Cuban father finally won in U.S. courts to bring Elian home
                  June 28.

                  United on world issues

                  In a joint communique published Thursday, Mbeki and Castro underlined their
                  governments' support for Third World nations' manufacture of generic versions
                  of AIDS medications and other health products patented by Western producers.
                  Some drugs companies are taking South Africa to court over the issue.

                  The two leaders also emphasized the "urgent need" to solve foreign debt
                  problems, and urged a re-structuring of the United Nations and world financial
                  institutions "to facilitate an important and adequate participation of nations of
                  the South."

                  As expected, the communique contained a South African condemnation of the
                  U.S. economic sanctions on Cuba, in place for four decades in a bid to
                  undermine Castro.

                  At a Havana news conference during his visit, Mbeki, who succeeded former
                  President Nelson Mandela in 1999 as South Africa's second post-apartheid
                  leader, also expressed concern about the brain-drain from the Third World to
                  rich countries.

                  "In part it is to do with limitation of opportunities," he said, noting that 250,000
                  African professionals worked in the United States and Europe, while the
                  continent had one scientist and engineer per 10,000 people, according to 1998
                  figures.

                  Mbeki flew out of Cuba Thursday morning at the end of his four-day visit.

                     Copyright 2001 Reuters.