http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp.../cuba_castro_3
Castro: U.S. Embargo Hasn't Broken Cuba
By LISA J. ADAMS, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA - America's economy hangs by a thread while Cuba after four decades under a U.S. economic blockade continues to offer free health care and boasts an infant mortality rate lower than its northern neighbor, President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) asserted early Saturday.
In a 4 1/2-hour speech to economists, Castro also took shots at President Bush (news - web sites), saying he "couldn't debate a Cuban 9th-grader." He recited for a half-hour from "Dos Cabalgan Juntos (Two Men Riding Together)," a book of purported malapropisms by Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, bent over with laughter as the audience roared.
Castro also challenged Bush to be clear about how the United States plans to realize a transition to democracy in Cuba. He wondered aloud again if it involved a plan to kill him.
"The great difference" between Cuba and the United States is that Cuba "has learned to do a lot with very little," Castro said at the conclusion of the Sixth International Meeting of Economists on Globalization and Development Problems.
Castro noted that many of the more than 1,000 attending economists from 50 countries including some from the United States had sharply criticized globalization and the "neoliberal" economic policies of industrialized nations.
He lauded U.S. Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel L. McFadden's "keen observations" among them that the United States, with a fiscal deficit of more than $520 billion, is managing its economy like a "banana republic."
"This economy is hanging by a thread," Castro said.
Castro also lashed out at the "foolishness" of the U.S. economic blockade that has been in place since the presidency of John F. Kennedy, saying it hadn't stopped Cuba from surpassing the United States in many areas.
The communist-run island has no illiteracy, a lower infant mortality rate than the United States, lower student-teacher ratios and higher levels of educational achievement, he said.
"Bush couldn't debate a Cuban 9th-grader," Castro remarked as he leaned across the podium toward applauding listeners.
Castro's commentary addressed everything from free trade agreements and fluctuating currencies to the current presidential campaign in the United States. At one point after offering his audience coffee to avoid falling asleep Castro went on to quote various reports from the U.S. media severely criticizing Bush, the economy, U.S. unemployment and the war on Iraq (news - web sites).
He talked at length about the Bush administration's Commission for a Free Cuba a panel set up in October and led by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) to plan a strategy for Cuba once the 77-year-old Castro is no longer in power.
When the United States announced creation of the commission, Powell suggested that the goal was not to force Castro out.
U.S. officials talk about a transition, "but how would they make this transition?" Castro asked Saturday, suggesting that "the only way is to proceed with an illegal assassination using the scores of techniques they have available."
Castro challenged Bush "to have the courage to say whether he is using this power."
Even if his days are numbered by the United States, "don't feel any pity," Castro told his listeners.
"There is no fear. To demonstrate fear would be a mistake. ... and in any case I would have to say to this illustrious gentleman (Bush) what the Roman gladiators said: 'Hail, Caesar. We who are about to die salute you.'"
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...s_040215035338
Castro demands Bush make clear assassination policy
HAVANA (AFP) - Cuban President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) urged US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) for the second time in a week 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 (news - web sites) 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, Ceasar. 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 λthatϋ 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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