Castro says Cuba marching ahead without him

HAVANA, Aug 1 (Reuters) Convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said today that Cuba is ''marching ahead'' without him at the helm, adding to the view of many Cubans that he is not coming back.

In a cryptic message to the country one year after bowel surgery forced him to hand over power temporarily to his brother Raul for the first time since Cuba's 1959 revolution, Castro said nothing about resuming office.

''I am being bombarded now with questions about when I will return to what some call power,'' he wrote in a column published on the front page of the Communist Party newspaper Granma.

''Raul, the party, the government and the mass and social organizations, led by the workers, are marching ahead guided by the unbreakable principle of unity,'' he said.

''What will I do? Fight on untiringly like I did all my life,'' he wrote in the column entitled ''The eternal flame.'' Castro, who will turn 81 this month, has not appeared in public since he was rushed to a hospital with intestinal bleeding a year ago and underwent a series of failed operations that, by his own account, put him at death's door.

Castro's column said he was being consulted on all important government decisions since his recovery.

''His message really sounds like a farewell,'' said student Yoandris reading Granma on a Havana street.

''He's already retired. He won't be back. The one who continues is his brother,'' said Eduardo Diaz, a self-employed shoe maker.

In his first Revolution Day speech since taking over, acting President Raul Castro last week asserted his leadership of the country with a dire assessment of its economic problems, criticism of meager state salaries and promises of reform.

SAGE-IN-CHIEF Raul Castro's speech left no doubt who is running Cuba and indicated that the provisional transfer of power last year year ago may be permanent, leaving Fidel Castro in the role of elder statesman.

''What Fidel is saying is that life goes on without him and that he's comfortable in the role of sage-in-chief,'' said Julia Sweig, an expert on Cuba at Washington's Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

Sweig does not expect Fidel Castro to preside over the executive Council of State when it is reappointed in March.

That would mean he will have ceased being Cuba's formal head of state.

Phil Peters, at the Lexington Institute near Washington, said Fidel Castro appeared to be ''passing the torch'' to his brother in his latest message, while making clear to the country that he still being consulted on major decisions.

''The only real guide will be the course the government takes in the economic policies that Raul has marked as a priority,'' he said.

Most Cubans are now looking to Raul Castro to mend their battered state-run economy and reduce widespread hardship they have faced since Cuba lost Soviet support over a decade ago.

That may require freeing up private initiative, a move opposed by Fidel Castro, who retains considerable influence and presence in the public mind by writing dozens of columns from his convalescence site.

The last major Cold War player still around, Castro warned Cubans that the ''Empire'' -- as he calls his ideological nemesis the United States -- was obsessed with with turning Cuba into a multi-party democracy.

He called on the Communist leadership to maintain Cuba's defense preparedness against invaders.

''The struggle must be implacable, against our own deficiencies and against the insolent enemy that tries to take hold of Cuba,'' he wrote.

REUTERS RS KP2147