Cuban Foreign Minister Named to Top Party Body

Cuban Foreign Minister Named to Top Party Body
By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: December 13, 2012

Cuba has elevated its foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, to the Communist Party’s Political Bureau, where he will join a handful of other senior leaders who are a generation younger than Fidel and Raúl Castro. Mr. Rodríguez, 54, is a former military officer, law professor and ambassador to the United Nations. He became the foreign minister in 2009. Known for his command of English and his loyalty to the Castros, he delivered a speech last month to the United Nations criticizing President Obama for failing to advance United States-Cuba relations despite the president’s promise to “launch a new chapter of engagement.”

The announcement about his rise to the Political Bureau in Granma, Cuba’s state-run newspaper, did not say whether he was replacing one of the 14 current members of the Political Bureau, nor did it signal whether Mr. Rodríguez was being considered as a successor to Raúl Castro, 81. But it did describe the move as part of a generational transition, and as a necessary break from what it called a “blockade of thinking that still persists when the time comes to select and prepare young leaders.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/world/americas/cuban-foreign-minister-named-to-top-party-body.html?_r=0

(Short article, no more at link.)

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Bruno Rodríguez[/center]