US biofuel policy could spark world 'holocaust', says Castro
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| Published on Thursday, April 5, 2007 |
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HAVANA, Castro (AFP): Fidel Castro on Wednesday warned that US energy policies could spark a global "holocaust," in his second newspaper column in a week, a hint the Cuban leader is recovering his feisty self.
Castro said making fuel from grain would divert food from the world's poor in order to satisfy the demands of drivers in wealthy countries.
"The worst may yet be to come: a new war to ensure gas and oil supplies, which could consume the entire human race in a total holocaust," Castro wrote in the Cuban Communist Party paper, Granma.
The article, titled "The Globalization of Genocide," condemned US President George W. Bush for pushing the global production of grain-based alternative fuels.
It continued the theme of a March 29 article in which Castro said Bush's promotion of ethanol was putting "more than three billion people" at risk of starvation.
The newspaper columns are another sign that the 80-year-old Cuban leader could be on the road to recovery after eight months out of the public eye.
In July, Castro handed over power to his brother Raul, the country's defense minister, following gastrointestinal surgery.
In the Granma article on Wednesday, Castro took note of recent discussions Bush held with Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on promoting biofuels.
"Who will supply the more than 500 million tonnes of corn and other cereals that the United States, Europe and the rich countries need to produce all the ethanol that the big US companies demand?"
"Where will the poor countries of the Third World obtain the minimal resources to survive?" Castro asked.
Bush "declared his intention to apply this formula around the world, which means only the globalization of genocide," he said.
"It is not my intention to harm Brazil, nor interfere in the domestic affairs of this great country," he wrote, without mentioning US-Brazilian cooperation on ethanol production, in which Brazil is a global leader.
Lula's top international adviser, Marco Aurelio Garcia, called Castro's criticism a product of "faulty understanding."
"World hunger is not a problem of food shortages, it is problem of a lack of profitability," Garcia said. Besides, he said, Brazil's agricultural land will not be used for biofuels.
"We do not want to turn ethanol into an ideological problem."
US ethanol is distilled mostly from corn, the price of which is at its highest in decades, while Brazil's ethanol is based on sugarcane.
Castro's article came on the heels of a new US study that showed the boom in ethanol fuels in the United States and elsewhere could have devastating effects on food prices and worsen world hunger.
C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer of the University of Minnesota wrote in the May/June edition of Foreign Affairs published Tuesday that the rush into ethanol threatens to divert massive amounts of corn and other food crops into biofuels.
Cuba produces ethanol and is planning to cooperate with Venezuela on large-scale biofuels production -- but from sugarcane waste, to spare food crops.
Castro's two articles in recent days came after increasingly frequent comments by Cuban officials and Castro's friends that he is recovering from his surgery, which has never been disclosed in detail. Cuba considers Castro's health a national security issue.
Several officials have said over the past month that they expected him to return to work soon, and even stand for re-election to the presidency in early 2008.
The leader of this Caribbean nation of 11 million for nearly five decades wrote in Granma that he had spent his eight-month recuperation mulling global problems like energy, the environment and the survival of mankind.
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