Four possible successors to Fidel Castro

Raul Castro, who has filled in for Fidel Castro since his brother was sidelined by illness almost 19 months ago, is a pragmatist more concerned with putting food on Cuban tables than with spreading revolution abroad.

The outwardly dour 76-year-old lacks his elder brother's charisma and has lived in his shadow for decades. But as acting president, Raul Castro has encouraged Cubans to openly debate the shortcomings of Cuba's communist system.

The camera-shy army general has acknowledged that wages paid by Cuba's socialist state are too low. Yet he is not expected to follow China's example and free up a market economy, at least not while his brother is alive. And he has promised more socialism.

Since their guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra mountains and the triumph of their revolution on Jan 1, 1959, Raul Castro has always been his brother's most trusted right-hand man.

CARLOS LAGE

The son of Havana laborers who still wears guayabera peasant shirts to the office, Lage became a vice president of the Council of State in 1993, positioning him as the third most-powerful figure behind the two Castros.Lage, 56, studied medicine at the University of Havana, where he earned a degree in pediatrics. He has been involved in politics since his student days, becoming head of the Federation of University Students in 1975.

Lage, was elected to the National Assembly in 1976, and a decade later, was recruited by Castro for the Council of State and his Assistance and Support Team, the strategic planning force from which he sprang to national attention with the Special Period reforms.

Appointed secretary of the Council of Ministers in 1990, he has served a prime ministerial function, albeit under constant guidance -- some would say intrusion -- from Fidel Castro. Although he is thought to support free and direct parliamentary elections and to advocate more private enterprise to boost services and quality of life, his few public expressions on international relations have toed the revolutionary line.

RICARDO ALARCON The President of the National Assembly since the early 1990s, Alarcon serves as the voice of the Havana hierarchy at the annual U.N. General Assembly and on issues of international conflict.

Alarcon, 70, has made the public case for the extradition of radical anti-Castro exile Luis Posada Carriles for trial in Venezuela on charges of having bombed a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976, as well as in demanding freedom for the Cuban Five, jailed in the United States since 2001 on espionage charges.