Kennedy may address Democratic convention: report

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) smiles as he addresses an Anti-Defamation League national leadership conference in Washington May 1, 2007.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Sen. Edward Kennedy, a liberal icon who is battling brain cancer, will likely deliver a speech at the Democratic convention this week, nearly three months after undergoing brain surgery, the Boston Globe reported on Sunday.

"He is definitely planning to be here," a Kennedy family confidant told the newspaper. "The whole Kennedy family will be in a special section. It should be quite (a) moment."

The 76-year-old brother of slain President John F. Kennedy has been undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments at Massachusetts General Hospital.

He has written a speech for the four-day convention that begins on Monday in Denver and badly wants to come, pending a final medical consultation, the newspaper reported.

The Massachusetts senator is often a featured speaker at Democratic conventions and has been a leading backer of Barack Obama, the Illinois senator who will be nominated this week as the party's candidate for president.

Kennedy, the second-longest serving member of the current U.S. Senate was diagnosed in May with a type of cancerous tumor that usually kills within three years.

He underwent brain surgery on June 2 in an operation that was declared a success by his surgeon, who said he should have "no permanent neurological effects."

But his doctors fear his treatment may have compromised his immune system and that addressing the convention would put him at further risk, the Globe reported.

The chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is the last of four brothers. President Kennedy and Sen. Robert Kennedy were both assassinated during the 1960s, while eldest brother Joseph Jr. was killed in World War Two.

(Reporting by Jason Szep; Editing by Eric Beech)