Fidel Castro steps aside, brother in charge

Cuba's ally Venezuela said the 79-year-old president was recovering after surgery to stop bleeding in his intestines, but there was no word from Cuba on his condition since news on Monday that he was handing power to his brother Raul.

It was the first time Castro, who will be 80 on August 13, had stood aside since he took power in 1959, prompting speculation that he was gravely ill or could already be dead.

A U.S. official who asked not to be identified said it appeared to be a "dress rehearsal" for succession, but speculated that the reference to a "complicated" surgery suggested the operation may not have gone smoothly.

The White House said only that it was monitoring the situation and still working for a "free" Cuba.

President George W. Bush, seeking to undermine a succession, has tightened enforcement of sanctions on Cuba and increased funding of its small, repressed dissident movement.

Despite the handover and mounting criticism of an embargo widely seen to have failed, a State Department official said there would be no change in policy toward Cuba because of laws restricting U.S. dealings with the communist government.

The news sparked street dancing in the Cuban exile district of Miami where Castro's enemies, backed by the United States, yearn for the demise of the West's only communist government.

In Cuba, where Castro's guerrillas once swept down from the Sierra Maestra hills to overthrow a U.S.-backed dictator, word of his illness brought apprehension over the future of the island nation of 11 million.

Castro, who last appeared in public giving a July 26 speech, said in a "proclamation" read out by an aide on television that he overexerted himself last month, partly due to a trip to a summit of South American leaders in Argentina.

"This caused an acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that obliged me to face a complicated surgical operation," he said in the statement read out on Monday night by his personal aide, Carlos Valenciaga.

"The operation obliges me to remain for several weeks resting, away from my responsibilities and duties," it said.

Castro, whose health has been an issue since he fainted during a speech in 2001, gave the reins of the ruling Communist Party, the post of commander in chief of the armed forces and president of the executive council of state to Raul Castro, 75, his brother and constitutional successor.

He said he was delegating power to his brother, who firmly commands Cuba's 50,000-member armed forces which in turn control the police, because Cuba was "under threat from the U.S. government."

Cubans went about their lives calmly on Tuesday with no signs in Havana of an increased police presence.

Venezuela, whose leftist President Hugo Chavez has become a close ally of Castro, said in a statement from its foreign relations ministry that Castro's recovery was "advancing positively," citing information from the Cuban government.

But medical experts said surgery for major bleeding in a elderly man is risky and could require several months of rest.

"Fidel must be in very bad shape to have handed over all powers. I pray that God helps him recover," said Carmen Vallejo, a dissident in Havana whose father was Castro's friend and doctor in the early days of the revolution.

The news sparked wild celebrations in Miami, where many exiles view Castro as a brutal dictator whose demise could usher in a new democratic era for their homeland.

"I think there's a possibility that he may be very, very ill or dead," Cuba-born Sen. Mel Martinez told a news conference. "I don't think there would be an announcement such as this unless it was pretty clear that he was incapacitated beyond recovery in the short term."

Raul Castro, who took over the reins of power in Cuba from his ailing brother Fidel, at least provisionally, has long lived under the shadow of his towering sibling and little is known about his plans for Cuba.

But analysts say the younger Castro, the world's longest serving defense minister, is no obsequious subordinate.

Rather, he appears to be a savvy organizer who has helped keep the leftist firebrand Fidel Castro in power with the backing of an efficient military, and now finds himself flung into a perhaps unwelcome public limelight after his brother underwent an intestinal operation.

Raul Castro, once a communist hard-liner, is seen as more pragmatic now than his brother when it comes to plotting the future of Cuban communism, and could lead Cuba to follow China's model of one-party politics and free market economics.

"Beans are more important that cannons," Raul said in the early 1990s, when Cuba was plunged into severe economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the military was forced to park jet fighters with the help of horses for lack of fuel.

The 50,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces he runs were the first institution on the island to adopt capitalist business practices, importing British manuals on management, and it now has major stakes in industry, agriculture and tourism, owning hotels at beach resorts and an airline.

His public profile has grown in recent years when he spearheaded a drive to reinvigorate the Communist Party at grass-roots level, and to heighten Cuba's military alertness since President Bush took power.

Some see him serving as a brief transitional figure who would open up Cuba, a mediator for a "softer" communism or a figurehead for a younger collective leadership.

Ricardo Gonzalez, a former president of the Miami-based Cuban Committee for Democracy, said socialism and one-party rule are probably too deeply ingrained in Cuba to be wiped out by the eventual death of Fidel, the "Comandante."

"I think it's going to be more like when Stalin died, when Mao died. It will continue, It's too institutionalized, and there's nothing else that can take its place," said Gonzalez.

Many exile leaders are betting that Fidel Castro's eventual departure will prompt a speedy transition.

"There's a lot of talk of this succession plan where Raul Castro is being incorrectly portrayed as the kinder, gentler dictator," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuba-born Republican congresswoman from South Florida and strident Castro critic.

"I think that were Raul to grab onto power it would be short-lived," Ros-Lehtinen told Reuters before the news that Fidel Castro had relinquished power.

Raul's chief of staff for 10 years, Alcibiades Hidalgo, who defected on a boat to the United States in 2002, said Raul always drank too much and was not in good health.

But since the failed assault on the Moncada Barracks, the guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra hills and the triumph of the January 1, 1959 revolution, Raul has always been his brother's most trusted right-hand man.

Military comrades describe him as tough but fair.

Cuba watchers have, however, long said Raul lacked the charisma, political skill, the health or even the ambition to completely fill his brother's shoes.

With Soviet aid, he helped convert a ragtag guerrilla force into one of the most formidable armies of the Third World. Cuban military advisors and troops served in "anti-imperialist" conflicts around the world, including Vietnam, Ethiopia and Angola.

Born on June 3, 1931, Raul Castro was raised -- like Fidel Castro -- on their father's large farm in eastern Cuba. As a boy, his best friends were the sons of poor peasants working for his well-to-do father, a fact which, he says, gave him a life-long sympathy for the underdog.

He is married to Vilma Espin, who took part in the revolutionary struggle, has headed the Cuban Federation of Women since it was founded almost forty years ago, and operates as Cuba's unofficial First Lady.

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