HAVANA, Aug 1: Cuban President Fidel Castro on Tuesday stepped down temporarily for the first time after 47 years of ruling the communist country on America’s doorstep, pitching millions of Cubans at home and abroad into uncertainty.

It was the first time Castro, who will be 80 on Aug 13, stood aside since he took power in 1959.

Fidel Castro, whose health has been an issue since he fainted during a speech in 2001, gave the reins of the ruling Communist Party, the post of commander-in-chief of the armed forces and president of the executive council of state to Raul Castro, 75, his brother and constitutional successor.

He said he was delegating power to his brother, who firmly commands Cuba’s 50,000-member armed forces which in turn control the police, because Cuba was ‘under threat from the US government’.

The news that Fidel Castro had handed power to his brother Raul after intestinal surgery sparked street dancing in the Cuban exile district of Miami where Castro’s enemies, backed by the United States, yearn for the demise of the West’s only communist government. In Cuba, where Castro’s guerillas once swept down from the Sierra Maestra hills to overthrow a US-backed dictator, word he had been operated on for intestinal bleeding brought apprehension over the future of the island nation of 11 million.

Castro said in a ‘proclamation’ read out by an aide on television that he overexerted himself last month, partly due to a trip to a summit of South American leaders in Argentina.

“This caused an acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that obliged me to face a complicated surgical operation,” he said in the statement read out on Monday night by his personal aide, Carlos Valenciaga.

“The operation obliges me to remain for several weeks resting, away from my responsibilities and duties,” it said.

Cubans went about their normal lives calmly with no signs of an increased police presence. There was no further information on the condition of Castro, but medical experts said any surgery for major bleeding in an 80-year-old man is risky.—Reuters