Castro demands Bush make clear assassination policy

Sunday, February 15, 2004

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Cuban President Fidel Castro urged US President George W. Bush for the second time in a week early Saturday to state whether he, as a policy, renounces the assassination of foreign leaders.

Referring to Bush on the reelection campaign trail, the 77-year-old communist leader, trading his usual olive drab for a grey tailored suit, asked in a lengthy address at an economic conference: "How can the transition (the US says it wants) be sped up in Cuba?"

Quickly answering his own question, Castro said "the only way is by moving to an extrajudicial execution," and Castro challenged Bush to state openly whether he believes he has the authority to order the executions of foreign leaders.

In the post-September 11 security frenzy, Bush reportedly gave the CIA written authorization to kill terrorists without seeking approval each time the agency stages an operation. Yet despite the authority to kill, Bush has not waived the US executive order banning assassinations that was put in place by then-president Gerald Ford in the 1970s.

"We will honor our obligations and duties until the last breath," Castro said, warning "we always are on guard."

Instead of his usual "Fatherland or Death" salute to cap a speech, Castro addressed Bush jokingly, saying: "Hail, Caesar. Those who are about to die salute you."

Castro, leader of the only communist, one-party state in the Americas, dedicated much of the rest of the speech to slamming "capitalist neoliberalism."

The Cuban president regularly warns of the potential for a US invasion, which has not come since he took power in 1959.

The United States had occupied Cuba, 90 miles off the coast of Florida, from 1906-1909 and from 1917-1922.

Florida, which decided the last US presidential race, is a potentially crucial state in US presidential elections, and the state's 800,000-strong mostly anti-Castro Cuban-American community is considered pivotal.

Tensions have been rising again between the United States and Cuba in recent months with Bush entering into a re-election campaign and Castro cracking down on the pro-democracy opposition in the island.

On January 30, Castro also accused Bush of plotting to kill him.

"We found out that Mr. Bush had made a commitment with the mafia of the Cuban-American Foundation to kill me. I accuse him of this," Castro told some 1,000 representatives from 32 nations attending a conference in Havana against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Castro has been the focus of rumors about his health since the mayor of Bogota, Luis Eduardo Garzon, said after a recent visit to Cuba that he had found Castro "very sick" and "physically limited."

Roger Noriega, the US under secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, recently accused Cuba of "actions to destabilize Latin America (that) are increasingly provocative to the inter-American community."

He has said that the United States will quickly send aid to Cuba after Castro's death.

"Castro will not live forever and there will be democratic change and a democratic government in Cuba," Noriega said. "The stakes are very high for us." 

Cuba has in turn stepped up island-wide preparations for any kind of attack from the United States.

The 130,000 committees of the defence of the revolution and other local organisations have been told to "step up revolutionary vigilance".

The Cuban parliament, highlighting what it called the "increasing aggressiveness of the United States" has ordered an increase in defence spending, which had been cut in recent years.

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