Bush Urges Cubans to Embrace Change

President Bush issued a statement Thursday urging Cubans to work for democratic change, but Cuba’s government sought to reassure the island that communism would persist despite the illness of Fidel Castro.

No new information was offered on Castro’s condition after intestinal surgery. Neither he nor his brother Raul have been seen in public since the Cuban leader temporarily transferred power to Raul on Monday.

“The revolution will continue” was the mantra repeated on state-run television and displayed in government newspapers.

“Certain of your rapid recovery, always toward victory!” a graduating class of Interior Ministry cadets chanted in a collective greeting to Fidel Castro, published on the front page of the Communist Party youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde.

Away from government cameras, however, some Cubans expressed wariness of life without Fidel Castro in charge.

“I, at least, am worried, because without him we are nothing,” gardener Rafael Reyes said. “We hope that he will recover.”

A U.S. official said Cubans in contact with the American mission in Havana also were expressing fear and unease.

“We are seeing among the Cuban people a real sense that Fidel is never coming back to power -- there seems to be a growing consensus in that direction,” said Drew G. Blakeney, a U.S. Interests Section spokesman. “There’s a lot of anxiety.”

In the statement released in Washington, Bush told Cubans: “We will support you in your effort to build a transitional government in Cuba committed to democracy, and we will take note of those, in the current Cuban regime, who obstruct your desire for a free Cuba.”

Bush said the U.S. was actively monitoring the situation in Cuba. He left Washington on Thursday for his ranch in Texas.

Juanita Castro, who lives in Miami and has been estranged from her brother Fidel since 1963, told CNN that she had spoken with people in Havana who told her he was released from intensive care Wednesday morning.