Monday, February 18 2008
By Michael Smith and Laura Zelenko
Feb. 19 (
Bloomberg) - Fidel Castro resigned as president and commander-in-chief of Cuba, after almost 50 years as the country's leader, the official daily Granma said.
"I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander-in-chief," Castro wrote, according to Granma in its online edition. "My only desire is to fight as a soldier for my ideas."
Castro, 81, the world's longest serving president, seized power in Cuba almost a half-century ago promising liberty and economic justice only to turn the Caribbean island into a communist bastion and a flashpoint of the Cold War.
The resignation should be "the beginning of a democratic transition for the people of Cuba,'' President George W. Bush said in a news conference in Kigali, Rwanda, and promised U.S. help. The international community should support "free and fair elections, and I mean free and I mean fair, not these kinds of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off.''
Story continues at Bloomberg.com...
