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Castro Mocks Reports Of Political Change

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By ANITA SNOW, The Associated Press

Published: February 24, 2008

HAVANA - Fidel Castro on Saturday rejected the idea of major political change after Cuba's parliament chooses a new president - his final published comments as the nation's longtime leader.

Writing under his new title, "Comrade Fidel," the 81-year-old Castro quoted from news reports suggesting that his retirement, announced Tuesday, would lead to political changes that could be accelerated by aid from Cuban exiles in the United States.

"The reality is otherwise," Castro wrote. He quoted approvingly from other news articles that said his retirement showed that U.S. officials had been powerless to affect Cuba's political transition.

The article published on the front page of the Communist Party newspaper Granma was one of a flurry of columns and announcements from Castro in recent days climaxing in the announcement of his retirement after 49 years as Cuba's political leader.

But he said he was laying his pen aside until after lawmakers decide today on his replacement as president of the island's supreme governing authority, the Council of State.

Castro's 76-year-old brother, Raul, the defense minister, is Castro's constitutionally designated successor as first vice president and is widely expected to be named president.

The younger Castro has headed Cuba's caretaker government for 19 months, since Fidel announced he had undergone emergency intestinal surgery and was provisionally ceding his powers.

In a separate report, Granma said that "all the conditions have been created" for today's meeting of the 614-member parliament, whose members were elected Jan. 20. Renewed every five years, the parliament, known as the National Assembly, is charged at its first gathering with selecting a new 31-member Council of State led by a president who is the nation's head of state and government.

The elder Castro has held the position since the current government structure was created in 1976. For 18 years before that, he was prime minister, a post that no longer exists.

He evidently retains his position as a member of the National Assembly, to which he was re-elected last month, and he remains head of the Communist Party as first secretary.

In a similar column Friday, Castro wrote that preparations for the parliament meeting "left me exhausted," and when he finally decided he would not accept another term as president, he did not regret it.

"I slept better than ever," he wrote. "My conscience was clear and I promised myself a vacation."

In the eastern Cuba district that Castro represents as a lawmaker, residents on Saturday debated who should replace him.

"Fidel is the greatest for us, but the most important thing now is that he rests and takes good care of himself," said 72-year-old retiree Juan Alvarez.

"I think that he made an intelligent decision - like all the decisions he made" since launching Cuba's revolution in the mid-1950s, Alvarez said.

He was willing to accept whomever is chosen by the National Assembly, Alvarez said, "and if it is Raul, well, that would be correct."

Sitting with him in a park in the town of El Cobre, on the outskirts of Santiago, was 70-year-old Javier Solano, who noted that Raul Castro is no longer young, either.

"It would be good to look for a young replacement, like Fidel himself said in one of his writings, so that Cuba can show the world it is not like they say, that here there is only Fidel and Raul," Solano said. "There is a whole nation as well behind them."

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