Fidel Castro Talks About His Succession

Speaking for the first time about a possible successor since his fainting spell last weekend, Fidel Castro told NBC in an interview Thursday night that his brother Raul remains his likely replacement.

"Raul is very healthy ... undoubtedly, he's the comrade who has the most authority after me," Castro said in the report aired on NBC's Nightly News.

"And he has the most experience," Castro said. "Therefore I think he has the capacity to succeed me."

Castro, who will turn 75 in August, has been in power since the Cuban revolution's triumph on Jan. 1, 1959. Raul Castro, Cuba's defense minister, is 70.

During the Communist Party's Fifth Congress in 1997, Fidel Castro described his younger brother as his "relevo" ¡ª a Spanish military term for changing of the guard.

"It is not something that I'm worried about, succession," Castro said in the NBC interview.

The Cuban nation was stunned on Saturday morning when the elder Castro appeared to faint two hours into a live televised speech given under a sweltering sun before a crowd of about 60,000 people.






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