HAVANA (IPS)�Fidel Castro, who turns 74 on Aug. 13, has spent more than 40 years governing Cuba and still works virtually around the clock, has said he expects a smooth handover of power when the time comes for him to step down.

"I know very well that man is mortal, although never worrying about that has been the key to my life," President Castro said in an interview with Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The president confessed that at the start of his "hazardous job as a revolutionary fighter" he believed it was "quite improbable that he would survive for very long," according to a report on the interview published June 22 by Granma, the daily newspaper of Cuba�s governing Communist Party.

Mr. Castro said it was not necessary to prepare his successor, and he rejected the possibility of a "traumatic and chaotic transition" in this Caribbean island nation. Whenever a true revolution has established itself, he said, "no man, no matter how important his personal contribution, is indispensable.

"The transition from one social system to another has been taking place for more than 40 years. It is not a question of replacing one man with another," said the Cuban leader, adding that his succession was not only prepared, but was already well underway.

Mr. Castro himself has stated in previous interviews that his brother Ra�l, first vice-president of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers, and the minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, will replace him.

"I almost always work at all hours of the day and night. After you hit 70, do you have any time to lose?" the president remarked to Mr. Zaragoza.

Mr. Castro also said he had reached the conclusion that speeches should be short.

In response to 33 questions posed by the former head of UNESCO, Mr. Castro defended socialism and Cuba�s strategy to maintain its socialist system.

He described the U.S. election process as a "big comedy," and reiterated that a country�s form of political organization "cannot be submitted to conditions."

The Cuban president also considers the current structure of the United Nations "outdated," and said Latin America had "lost nearly 200 years of history in terms of social development and political integration."

There is no difference between Cuban dissident groups at home or abroad, said Mr. Castro, who argued that they arose from the same origins and shared the same objectives. He described internal and external dissidents alike as "instruments of U.S. policy towards Cuba."

But with a few exceptions, the dispersed and fragmented internal opposition groups in Cuba maintain that they are independent of the hard-line anti-Castro Cuban exile community in Miami.

However, in the president�s view, the "tiny little groups" operating in Cuba also form part of the "U.S. counter-revolutionary strategy" and are "directly coordinated" by officials at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

"Their essential mission is to obstruct Cuba�s diplomatic and economic relations, and to supply, with their provocations, publicity and material for the campaign of propaganda against, and isolation of, the revolution," he said.