Raul Castro announces he will retire in 2018

Cuba's President Raul Castro speaks at the closing session of the National Assembly of the Peoples Power in Havana Feb 24, 2013. Castro announced on Sunday he would step down from power after his second term as president ends in 2018, and the new parliament named a 52-year-old rising star to become his first vice-president and most visible successor. Castro, 81, made the announcement in a nationally broadcast speech shortly after the Cuban National Assembly elected him to a second five-year term in the opening session of the new parliament. "This will be my last term," Castro said.[Photo/Agencies]

HAVANA - Cuban leader Raul Castro announced on Sunday he would step down from power after his second term as president ends in 2018, and the new parliament named a 52-year-old rising star to become his first vice-president and most visible successor.

Castro, 81, made the announcement in a nationally broadcast speech shortly after the Cuban National Assembly elected him to a second five-year term in the opening session of the new parliament.

"This will be my last term," Castro said.

In a surprise move, the new parliament named as his first vice-president Miguel Diaz-Canel, a member of the political bureau who rose through the party ranks in the provinces to become the most visible possible successor to Castro. Diaz-Canel would succeed Castro if he cannot serve his full term.

The new government will almost certainly be the last headed up by the Castro brothers and their followers who have ruled Cuba since they swept down from the mountains in the 1959 revolution.