Former European Presidents call for Castro to go

Fidel Castro

Friday, September 19, 2003

BUDAPEST, Hungary: Several European leaders want Cuban President Fidel Castro ousted. Former Presidents Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, Lech Walesa of Poland and Arpad Goncz of Hungary, in an open letter appearing in newspapers across Europe and the United States, issued a call for the creation of a "Cuban Democracy Fund" to aid pro-democracy dissidents and promote peaceful change on the island. 

The letter, according to the Voice of America, states that the government of Cuban leader Fidel Castro is "running short of breath, just as [communist] party rulers in the Iron Curtain [Eastern Bloc] did at the end of the 1980s." 

The leaders also say Cuba's internal opposition is getting stronger, the communist revolution is getting old and the Cuban regime is getting nervous.

The letter says Europe should make it clear that Fidel Castro is a dictator, and that dictatorships cannot become partners until they embrace political liberalization. 

The three former presidents also say "it is the responsibility of the democratic world to support representatives of the Cuban opposition, irrespective of how long," as they put it, "the Cuban Stalinists manage to cling to power." 

All three authors of the letter are one-time dissidents who came to power after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, according to the VOA.

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