``Anything but retreat; anything but surrender,'' Castro said in an opening-day speech to the 1,500 delegates and 250 guests at the Palace of Conventions.

Clad in his traditional olive-green uniform, the 71-year-old Castro spoke from a stage under large portraits of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Jose Marti and Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara, and the slogan ``This nation, this party will never surrender their unity.''

He did not read from a prepared text, saying he had decided ``to make some observations.''

Cuba's defiance ``is essentially the people's struggle for their conscience, readiness for combat, spirit of sacrifice, sense of honor, freedom and independence,'' he said.

Castro acknowledged the impact on Cuba of the collapse of the communist bloc, ``something unpredictable, unbelievable in the history of humanity [and] terribly hard in every way on our country and our revolution.''

The congress is closed to the foreign press, which must rely on excerpts and descriptions provided by state radio and television.

Next in the session, the delegates are to discuss a document titled The Party of Unity, Democracy and Human Rights That We Defend. In essence, the document advocates socialism and a single-party system for Cuba beyond 2000.

A multiparty system lends itself ``to politicking, injustice, abuse, demagogical promises never fulfilled, fraud, corruption and the debasement of politics,'' the document says.

Instead, Cuba's one-party system represents ``true democracy,'' it says, because ``there is no possible breach between the leaders and the people.''

The document assails ``the colonialist objectives of the Helms-Burton Act'' and warns against the United States' ``new forms of ideological warfare, ever more subtle and complex, devised to damage the authority, influence and legitimacy of [Cuba's socialist] system.''

In the face of this threat, ``indifference and inaction on the part of revolutionaries are inadmissible today,'' the paper says.

Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald