HAVANA (AFP) — President Raul Castro announced that Cuba's first Communist Party Congress in 12 years, mapping out the country's political and economic future, will be held in the second half of 2009.
Castro, 76, also announced he was commuting the death sentence of a number of inmates in Cuba, but that capital punishment would not be struck from the penal code.
"The Political Office deems it necessary to carry out the VI Party Congress, and we will propose it take place in the second semester of next year," Castro told a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party on Monday.
Representatives of some 900,000 party activists will "confront the challenges of the future" and "as Comrade Fidel says, guarantee the continuity of the Revolution when its historic leaders are no more," Castro said.
Under Cuba's constitution, the Communist Party is "the higher governing force of society and the state" and is responsible for setting the country's political and social agenda at five year intervals.
Cuba's last Communist Party congress was held in 1997 and the following one in 2002 was postponed without any official explanation.
Raul Castro officially took over as head of state in February from his ailing 81-year-old brother Fidel, who had ruled the island for nearly half a century.
Castro said an official announcement with a precise date for the congress would be made "at the appropriate time." By law, an announcement must be made within six months of the meeting.
The Cuban leadership appeared to be waiting until after the US presidential elections to obtain better "visibility" for the Congress internationally.
"If the extreme right in the United States succeeds in imposing itself again in elections in November ... the world climate of instability and violence" will persist "with direct effects on our country," Castro said.
The congress is also held to elect the party's Central Committee (113 members), Secretariat (12) and its top body, the Political Office (21).
In separate elections, the congress also chooses the first and second secretaries of the Communist Party, posts that since 1965 have consistently gone to Fidel and Raul Castro.
Thus, the next Congress will decide -- unless he resigns first -- what role if any Fidel Castro will hold in the party going forward. He quit the State Council in February when he declined to be reelected for health reasons.
Fidel Castro has been recovering from gastrointestinal surgery since July 2006.
Raul Castro also announced he was commuting the death sentences of an unspecified number of inmates, a decision, he added, "not taken under pressure, but as a sovereign act in accordance with the humanitarian and ethical conduct" of the country.
The sentences will be commuted to jail terms of 30 years for some inmates and life in prison for others, he said, without indicating who or how many inmates would benefit from the measure.
Castro said that he was considering sparing a Guatemalan and a Salvadoran from the death sentence -- both were convicted in a 1997 Havana hotel bombing that killed an Italian tourist -- and a Cuban murderer.
The commutations, Raul said, "does not mean we're taking capital punishment out of the penal code ... We can't disarm ourselves before an empire (the United States) that doesn't stop harassing and attacking us."
Cuba's last executions were carried out on April 11, 2003, when three men faced the firing squad for hijacking a boat with 50 people on board and forcing its crew at gunpoint to take them to Miami, Florida.
The Human Rights and National Reconciliation Committee of Cuba estimates there are 40-50 people on Cuba's death row.
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