HAVANA - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro complained Friday that new US President Barack Obama only cares about Cuban-Americans who vote, but "almost 12 million Cubans living on the island do not interest him."

As the United States looks at reworking its relationship with Cuba, Castro, 82 and ailing after major intestinal surgery but still head of the Communist Party, wrote in official media that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel "told reporters what Obama cares about is the Cuban-American community."

Castro said "Obama's policy (toward Cuba) is losing its virginity (as) the almost 12 million Cubans who live on the island do not interest him."

Washington has had a full economic embargo on Havana since 1962, seeking to isolate it into accepting a political and economic opening up that has not come in more than a half century.

Obama has said he would talk with foreign leaders without conditions.

But so far he has given little idea how far he might be willing to reach out to cash-strapped Cuba, the Americas' only one-party communist state.

Obama has said he would ease a few US sanctions that apply only to Cuban Americans visiting the island and sending home remittances.

But so far there has been no US mention of ending travel restrictions on most Americans. Havana also wants Washington to give back the Guantanamo base it holds against Cuba's will, and to change US immigration policies for Cubans.

Thursday Fidel Castro, a Cold War legend who led Cuba for almost a half century, also urged Obama to publicly reject the assassination of foreign political foes.

Yet Fidel Castro wrote that when asked who Obama's candidate in Cuba might be, "the man closest to the president (Emanuel) did not want to get into it and added 'I think that with Cuba, the less said, the better."

The United States still does not allow other US nationals to visit Cuba without special permission.

And the United States still grants immediate temporary residency and expedited legal US residency to any Cuban national who sets foot on US soil -- something it does not do for people from other communist countries. Cuba charges the policy sparks potentially deadly illegal emigration by sea.

Fidel Castro, now replaced as president by his brother Raul Castro, 77, wrote Thursday that he feared Obama, trapped in the capitalist system, would not be able to change US policy given "his role in a system that is the very opposite of every just principle."