San Salvador - Eight presidents left the Iberian American Summit in San Salvador before it closed Friday, in a mass escape that made the gathering's last day lacklustre.

Between midday Thursday and early Friday, the leaders of Brazil, Nicaragua, Argentina, Panama, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and the Dominican Republic left the Salvadorian capital. The presidents of Venezuela, Cuba and Uruguay directly skipped the summit.

Havana - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met with the ailing former Cuban president Fidel Castro, whom he said he found "very lucid and active."

Lula and the elderly Castro - who formally stepped down from the Cuban presidency in February to pursue his recovery for unspecified health problems - met for some two hours just before the end of the Brazilian's less-than-24-hour visit to Cuba.

Washington - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama vowed to close the Guantanamo prison camp for suspected terrorists but provided no timeframe for shuttering the controversial facility.

"I want to close Gitmo as quickly as we can do it - prudently," Obama said in an interview on CNN aired Friday, using the abbreviated name for the naval base that houses about 270 detainees. "I am not going to give a time."

Rome - A consortium of private Italian investors on Friday made a binding offer to purchase the state's controlling stake in struggling airline Alitalia, according to a consortium statement cited in news reports.

The offer was presented to Alitalia's bankruptcy administrator, Augusto Fantozzi a few hours before a deadline at midnight local time (2300 GMT).

The bid came after talks between the Compagnia Aerea Italiana (Italian Air Company), or CAI, consortium, and unions representing Alitalia employees.