Castro Says He’d Step Down if Cuban Economy Revives

SANTIAGO, Cuba — President Fidel Castro says he would like to step down in five years if Cuba’s faltering economy improves.

Castro was asked during a two-hour news conference with foreign reporters late Wednesday if he expects to be president in 1998.

“I hope it will not be necessary. We will have to see what life will say,” said the man who has dominated Cuba since the 1959 Communist revolution.

In his news conference, which covered a wide range of topics, Castro said the more than 30-year U.S. trade embargo remains Cuba’s biggest problem and indicated he would not be stepping down as long as it remained in effect.

“I feel I am a slave of the revolution,” he said. “I hope conditions in five years are different from what they are today.”

Castro spoke after the country’s first popular elections for Parliament since the revolution, balloting in which no candidate faced an opponent or disagreed with the Communist Party line.

Cuban officials said Thursday that Castro, facing a popular election for the first time, won 99% of the vote in his National Assembly district.

Hinting Wednesday he might not run again, Castro said: “Time passes and marathon runners get tired. This has been a very long race, too long.”

Castro said President Clinton seems a very different man from George Bush. He called Clinton “a man who is not a warmonger and who looks to be a man of peace. This does not mean he will change the policy toward Cuba.”

Clinton has said he does not intend to change U.S. policy toward Cuba.