Chavez still close to Cuba after buddy Fidel retires

By Frank Jack Daniel

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez warmly congratulated Cuba's new leader Raul Castro on Sunday, and said ties with the communist island will remain tight despite the retirement of his close friend Fidel Castro.

Raul Castro was named president of Cuba on Sunday, ending his brother Fidel Castro's 49-year rule but keeping the country on a communist path.

Chavez led a standing ovation on his weekly television show to celebrate the naming of Raul as Cuban president but said the ailing Fidel, who he describes a father figure, would continue to be "El Comandante."

"Raul has been elected president of the State Council of Cuba, in other words the president of socialist Cuba. Let's applaud Raul, who is a comrade, a companion, more than the brother of Fidel," he said, adding that he would continue to support the Caribbean state.

Venezuela under Chavez is Cuba's most important benefactor, shipping the country millions of barrels of oil at favorable rates worth about $2 billion annually. In return, Cuba has sent about 30,000 doctors to work in the OPEC nation.

Fidel Castro has long seen Chavez as a kind of protege, and the two men frequently appeared together at radical events on the sidelines of presidential conferences in the region until the octogenarian was forced by illness from the public eye in 2006

Chavez, 53, visited his friend in hospital on several occasions, and was seen in videos of the meetings bringing Castro gifts and holding his hand.

Many observers have commented on that there is not such a natural friendship with Raul Castro, 76, but Chavez's stated commitment to socialism and admiration for the Cuban system means the two countries will stay close at least in the short term.

"It will be impossible for Raul Castro to replicate Fidel's close personal relationship with Chavez," said Dan Erikson, a expert on Cuba at Washington think-tank Inter-American Dialogue.

"However in the short term, Cuba is likely to remain highly dependent on Venezuelan oil and this means that Raul will need to stay in Chavez's good graces."

Raul Castro is widely expected to bring some economic reforms to Cuba's economy but in a sign that change is unlikely to be deep or abrupt, hardline party ideologue Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, was named first vice president, or Cuba's No. 2.

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel, editing by Jackie Frank)