US Administration Involved Embarrassing and Delicate Episodes:
Terrorist Adventures Against Cuba 

LISANKA GONZALEZ SUAREZ / Gramma International (Cuba)  1may2005

PRESIDENT Fidel Castro stated today before more than one million people in the historical Plaza de la Revolución that some day the people of the United States will unite with their Latin American brothers and sisters in the struggle for justice, truth and for the survival of our species, which is now at stake.

Addressing a vast crowd of men and women who listened to him in an impressive silence, he spoke of the embarrassing situation facing the Bush administration with the six-week presence in that country of the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. "The present US administration is involved in one of the most embarrassing and delicate episodes of its terrorist adventures, aggressions and lies against Cuba. The whole world knows that Luis Posada Carriles, the most notorious and cruelest terrorist in the Western hemisphere, as acknowledged by the US mainstream media, has entered the United States and asked for asylum in that country, whose soldiers are dying daily, and whose fatalities have already reached close to two million, in the name of a war on terrorism unleashed in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001," he affirmed.

After referring to various US press reports, according to which the major TV channels are on the trail of Posada Carriles and some of them very close to discovering his whereabouts, the Cuban president warned: "The US media are going to wind up doing and discovering what the 180,000 persons working in the Department of Homeland Security, the 22 agencies operating and participating in combating terrorism and the US internal security services have been unable to achieve."

Subsequently, reading out a letter from Republican Senator Norman Coleman confirming that the Department of Homeland Security has received an asylum application on behalf of Posada Carriles, he stated: "The US government, under intense pressure from the very ravens it has created, has not had the courage to use the only recourse that remains to it, that of immediately arresting Posada Carriles in line with national and international law and placing him at the disposition of the Venezuelan courts that should bring him to trial."

Fidel recalled that Cuba has renounced the right to try the terrorist and would accept to having him appear before a totally impartial international court located wherever the parties agree, "Luis Posada Carriles isn’t really an important character in himself, the important aspect of that character is that he is revealing to the world the incredible hypocrisy, the lies, immoral acts and the cynicism that the empire is using to subjugate the planet."

CUBA IS COMMITTING THE SIN OF EXISTING

"Standing up to the most powerful empire ever to have existed in the history of humanity, bent upon destroying our identity as an independent nation in the past and then an inescapable revolution, here we are in this glorious plaza against where its most perfidious calumnies and its grossest crimes have been exploded. At a distance of 90 miles from that power, Cuba is committing and – as nobody should be in any doubt of that – the sin of existing," the Cuban leader observed.

In another part of his address, after underlining the failure of different US administrations in their aggressions and attempts to economically asphyxiate the island, he emphasized that despite the numerous obstacles imposed, Cuba is growing stronger, extending its economic and international relations, while even trade in US agricultural produce is on the rise. "Here we are, stronger than ever, more united than ever, more decided than ever to take forward the exceptional labor of creating a more just, more solidary, more humane and more prosperous society, like a promised land that is already visible and within the reach of our hands."

The Cuban president also referred to the recent State Department publication of the list of states qualified as terrorist, which includes Cuba. "It is perversely and viciously affirming that Cuba has continued to actively oppose the US-led coalition that has decided to wage war against international terrorism." Fidel went on to ask why Cuba should follow the leadership of a gangster-like and genocidal government.

He spoke of recent reports from the US Center Against Terrorism reflecting the fact that acts of terrorism in 2004 were triple those of 2003; 651 as opposed to 175. He went on to note that when the US government launched the unjustified invasion of Iraq it consciously wielded a lie, when in reality, what it was after was oil, thus making that war a gross war of conquest. And he asked what credibility could be afforded to "the shameless anti-Cuba scarecrows elaborated by the State Department which, in addition, has committed the error of putting in first place the country that inspires the least fear and which moreover, can unmask its despicable lies."

Finally, in reference to the speakers who preceded him, the Cuban leader thanked "our brothers and sisters from the North, Center and South (of America)." They were: Atilio Borón of Argentina; Giustino Di Celmo, father of the Italian tourist killed by a terrorist attack on Havana’s Copacabana Hotel; Robert Marsh from the U.S., a relative of one of the victims of the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers; Marcela Escribiano, a Chilean-Canadian; Shafik Handar, the historical leader of the Salvadoran FMLN; Daniel Ortega, former Nicaraguan president and general secretary of the FSLM; and Nicolás Maduro, president of the Venezuelan National Assembly.

source: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/mayo/domingo1/administra-i.html 2may2005