LEAD: Raul Castro rules out multi-party system in Cuba

By Isaac Risco Jan 29, 2012, 23:23 GMT

Havana - Cuban President Raul Castro on Sunday ratified the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) monopoly as the only legal political organization on the island, but said he plans to limit to 10 years the maximum terms of key political positions.

In his address at the closing of the unprecedented two-day PCC convention in Havana, Castro directly addressed the 'illusions' that have emerged amid political reform about a potential end of the single-party regime.

The idea of a single party is a concept that the current Cuban leadership will never give up, he said in an address of just over 40 minutes.

Dissidents and the Cuban Roman Catholic Church, among others, have stressed that the country's decision-making process still lacks political plurality and have demanded political reform to go with recent economic changes.

'Renouncing the principle of a single party would be simply equivalent to legalizing the party or parties of imperialism on home soil,' Castro said.

Cuban authorities insist that dissidents are on the payroll of foreign powers, particularly the United States, and that they serve foreign interests.

Castro said he respects multi-party systems in other countries but will not allow the return to Cuba of the 'bourgeois republic,' given the country's status as a 'besieged fortress.' He also slammed the western concept of democracy, which he said serves powerful economic interests.

In his speech, Castro pointed to plans he unveiled in April to limit to a 'maximum of two consecutive five-year terms' the exercise of key political positions, although he gave no deadline for implementation. Cuba was led by Fidel Castro from 1959 until he fell ill in 2008.

Raul Castro, 80, also insisted on the need to find younger potential leaders within the PCC and mentioned generational change as one of the fundamental strategic tasks ahead of Cuban authorities.

Castro presided since Saturday over the first-ever convention of the PCC, in which over 800 delegates debated reform behind closed doors.

Although the convention features in the constitution, such an assembly had never been held before. It was called in the wake of the party's April congress, which institutionalized the island's economic reform process.

Delegates debated the re-organization of the party in light of recent reforms, which add some market elements and grant more space to private initiative in many fields. Now Cubans are allowed to buy and sell cars and homes, which were previously owned by the state. They are also now permitted to run small restaurants and workshops for their own profit.

Raul Castro, who took over the helm of government after ailing brother Fidel stepped down, became the island-nation's president in 2008, but only officially took over the PCC leadership in April.

The convention's draft declaration was debated in 65,000 meetings of PCC groups and the Young Communists Union, according to the party's daily newspaper Granma on Friday. There are more than 800,000 registered members of the Communist Party in the country of 11 million people, it said.

State media gave few details of the debate at the convention, which went largely unnoticed for the man on the street.