On Castro's resignation

After 49 years ruling over the Socialist state of Cuba,its president Fidel Castro has announced this morning that he is stepping down due to ill health. Castro came to power in 1959 after leading a successful revoultion and overthrowing the US backed government of President Fulgencio Batista. Along with Che Guevara and his brother Raul,he pledged to give the land back to the people and to defend the rights of the poor. The regime was never recognised by the United States and 2 years later,President Kennedy sought its overthrow in the Bay of Pigs invasion.The move was a disaster and sought only to throw the regime into the hands of the Soviet Union. A year later,the world was plunged into a nuclear crisis as American tried to prevent the Soviet union placing missiles on the island within 90 miles of its coast. The CIA are estimated to have tried over 600 times to assassinate the Cuban leader. Since the break up of the Soviet Union,Cuba has been brought to the brink of economic disaster.The US has continued to mount an economic blockade in the hope that increasing the economic stranglehold would force Castro out. The policy has been a failure despite economic migrants landing on the coast of Florida,it has up to now strengthened the regime's determinatiion to survive. Danny Finkelstein on Comment is central has done a useful round up of some of the best journalism over the past 49 years One of which was Daniel Hannan writing a year ago in the Spectator

Sola mors tyrannicida est, wrote Thomas More: death is the only way to get rid of tyrants. And so it has proved for Fidel Castro. Sixteen years ago, he looked finished. The USSR had collapsed, and the Soviet subsidies that had propped up the Cuban economy for 30 years had been abruptly terminated. Around the world, statues of Lenin were being melted down or sold off to collectors of kitsch. But Castro never wavered in his revolutionary fervour. Unlike the apparatchiks of Eastern Europe, he had not inherited the communist system, nor seen it imposed by a foreign army. The Cuban revolution was his revolution, and he was damned if he was going to give it up.

The qusetion though is what happens now.We can assuem that Bush and Cheney will not launch a full scale invasion.Fidel is expected to nominate his brother Raul as the new leader,he has been effectively in charge for the last 2 years President Bush is hinting at a fresh start,Telegraph.co.uk is reporting

Speaking a news conference in Rwanda, Mr Bush said: "I believe that the change from Fidel Castro ought to begin a period of a democratic transition.Putting forward the promise of an end to the 46 year blockade of the island nation, the American president pledged that he stood ready to help Cubans realise the "blessings of liberty.Eventually this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections, and I mean free and I mean fair, not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as being true democracy," he said.

It may well have an effect on the American elections,Roxanne Escobales,writing on Guardian online says The Republican candidate, John McCain, will be relying on the Hispanic vote. He has supported staying the course with the long-standing economic embargo. According to the Candidates on Cuba online forum, which invites the candidates to share their views on Cuba question, McCain "supports the Cuban people's quest to be free and the US economic embargo on the Cuban dictatorship to deny the Castro regime the resources to continue its repression." McCain would like to see Raúl Castro tried for the murder of US citizens in international waters following an incident in 1996, when he was the Cuban defence minister.