The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Havana

Cuba's rubber-stamp National Assembly will name Fidel Castro's successor on Sunday, ending the 49-year rule of the bearded revolutionary who turned Cuba into a communist state on America's doorstep. His brother Raul Castro, who has been running Cuba since the 81-year-old leader was sidelined by illness 19 months ago, is widely expected to become the next president. The 614-member legislature meets at 10 a.m. EST. An announcement on composition of the Council of State, the island's highest executive body, is expected in the afternoon. Fidel Castro, who has aged from a military fatigue-clad commander in chief who gave seven-hour speeches under the Caribbean sun into a shuffling old man, has not appeared in public since undergoing intestinal surgery in July 2006. He will retain significant but potentially waning influence as first secretary of the ruling Communist Party. Castro announced his retirement as president last Tuesday, almost half a century after he ousted a U.S.-backed dictator in an armed revolution and began to create a persona that would turn him into an icon of the left, a perpetual thorn in Washington's side and a tyrant to his foes.