The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Havana

Cuba's ailing leader Fidel Castro has defended naming his brother Raul to stand in for him last year, saying no one in the communist country's national assembly saw it as nepotism. In a letter to the assembly Friday, the 81-year-old strongman also again made an ambiguous suggestion that he could give up the presidency, saying that he had stopped clinging to power. "There was a stage when I thought I knew what had to be done and I wanted the power to do it," he admitted, saying it was due to "an excess of youthfulness and deficit of conscience." "What made me change? Life itself, tempered by the profound thought of (Jose) Marti and the classics of socialism," Castro said, in the letter read by assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon. In the letter Castro also referred to criticisms made by Washington that in choosing his brother Raul to steer the country he was being anti-democratic and reserving power to his family.

"In the proclamation signed on July 31, 2006, none of you saw it at all as an act of nepotism nor as a usurping of the functions of the assembly," he told the body.

The communist leader turned over his responsibilities to Defense Minister Raul Castro "temporarily" in July 2006 to recuperate from surgery. He has not been seen in public since, and there have been no clear reports on the state of his health.