HAVANA (AP) -- Hoping to ensure Cuba remains socialist long after Fidel
                 Castro is gone, lawmakers voted unanimously late Wednesday to make
                 socialism an "irrevocable" part of the constitution.

                 After three days of meetings and about 168 speeches, more than 500 members of
                 Cuba's unicameral National Assembly voted to declare that "capitalism will never
                 return again" to the Caribbean island.

                 During the vote, deputies names were called out in alphabetical order and each one
                 stood up and shouted "Si!" into a microphone. Of Cuba's 578 deputies, 559 were
                 present and all voted affirmatively.

                 Deputies grew emotional and almost giddy during the tally, eventually applauding
                 loudly after each vote. When the final vote had been declared unanimous, the
                 deputies first stood stoically at attention for the Cuban national anthem, then held
                 hands and swayed back in forth as they sang the socialist anthem "Internationale."

                 Presiding over the session was Fidel Castro, who afterward personally greeted
                 many of the lawmakers in the assembly.

                 Castro, who came to power in the 1959 revolution, declared Cuba's government to
                 be socialist two years later, on the eve of the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion by a
                 U.S.-trained exiled army.

                 "We ne ed socialism more today than ever!" Castro said before the vote. "To
                 guarantee the future, a strong ideological base is needed."

                 The amendment was proposed as Cuba felt increased pressure at home and from
                 abroad to carry out democratic reforms.

                 The proposal originally described Cuba's system as "untouchable," but the National
                 Assembly's commission on constitutional and legal affairs later decided
                 "irrevocable" was more precise.

                 Once approved, the clause stating that capitalism never would return to Cuba
                 "cannot be the object of change or modifications that alter its essential content," a
                 commission report said.

                 Vice President Carlos Lage, a top leader in both the government and the Communist
                 Party, declared, "The best political system is of just one party. True democracy is
                 socialist. And the only way to defend human rights is in a society of equality and
                 social justice."

                 "For our people to return to the past is undesirable, unthinkable, impossible" Lage
                 said of Washington's recent demands that Cuba embrace capitalism and U.S.-style
                 democracy. "The homeland is sacred, the revolution is unconquerable and socialism
                 is irrevocable."

                 At 50, Lage is among the younger high-ranking government officials expected to
                 help guide Cuba after the deaths of Castro, and his brother and designated
                 successor, Defense Minister Raul Castro.

                 The lawmakers' sessions, broadcast live on state television and radio, were
                 supposed to run just Monday and Tuesday. A nationwide work stoppage was
                 declared all three days, closing banks, schools, offices and many stores and
                 factories.

                 Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said late Tuesday the measure is necessary to
                 protect the current system after the Castro brothers die. It was a rare public
                 reference to their mortality.

                 The proposed constitutional amendment is "key," said Perez Roque, to "what we do
                 when the generation that carried out the revolution, and the command of it today,
                 the generation of Fidel, of Raul ... is no longer with us."

                 "The key is not to be disarmed of our ideas," said the foreign minister, who at 37 is
                 among the youngest of the ranking officials in the communist government.

                 Perez Roque also said Cuba's Communist Party and Revolutionary Armed Forces
                 must never be dismantled to ensure that socialism endures.

                 Fidel Castro, who will be 76 in August, and Raul Castro, 71, presided over the
                 gathering. Both also are members of parliament.

                 The government says the proposed amendment is its answer to President Bush's
                 refusal last month to lift American trade and travel restrictions until Cuba
                 undertakes reforms, including multiparty elections.

                 Government opponents said the measure also appear aimed at undermining the
                 Varela Project, which seeks a referendum on whether voters favor guarantees for
                 liberties such as freedom of expression and the right to own a business.

                  Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.