By Xinhua
Pyongyang : North Korea Saturday wished good health to Fidel Castro, who recently announced his retirement as Cuban president, and praised the leftist leader for his contribution to maintain good ties between the two communist countries, official Korean Central News Agency reported.
“The Korean people have regarded Fidel Castro as the closest comrade-in-arms and the country will make positive efforts to develop the relations of friendship with Cuba,” the news agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
North Korea sincerely hoped that “he will recover his health as early as possible and everything will go well in Cuba in the future too”, said the spokesman.
Castro, 81, said in a statement published Tuesday that he would not accept the position of president of the Council of State.
Under Cuba’s constitution, the National Assembly chooses 31 of its members to form the Council of State, whose leader will be the country’s president.