Posted on 01/30/2004 5:39:21 AM PST by fdsa2
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro vowed on Friday to die fighting "with a gun in my hand" if the United States invaded Cuba to overthrow his communist government.
"I don't care how I die, but for sure, if they invade us, I will die fighting," the 77-year-old leader said at a meeting of anti-free trade activists from across the hemisphere.
Castro, who was the target of countless CIA assassination plots in the 1960s, called on the Bush administration to clarify to the world what its policy was on assassinating foreign leaders.
Earlier this month, Bush Administration officials accused Cuba of joining forces with Venezuela's leftist government to destabilize democratic governments in Latin America.
President Bush last year named a commission to speed up a post-Castro transition to democratic rule in Cuba.
Havana is worried that Cuba could be the next on Bush's list for a regime change after Iraq.
"We don't want a conflict, but we will not give an inch on our principles," Castro said in a rambling five-and-a-half-hour speech.
Castro said Cuba was prepared to resist invasion, with "hundreds of thousands" of soldiers ready to defend the island with guerrilla tactics he had used in the Sierra Maestra mountains to defeat a dictator's army and seize power in 1959.
He said instructions have been given in the case he were to die in a surgical strike.
"This nation will never surrender ... We have taken all the measures. Everyone knows what to do," Castro said.
Western diplomats said Cuban authorities were preparing the population for a possible invasion with training drills.
Castro said Washington "should explain to the world what its position is on its powers to order assassinations."
A U.S. presidential directive from the 1970s banned the assassination of foreign leaders, but the Bush Administration appeared to waive the ban when it made clear that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was to be considered a target before last year's invasion.
Castro spoke to more than 1,000 activists, from Andean Indians and landless Brazilians to Canadian postal workers, who met in Havana to plan protests against the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Not a word of this in the Reuters summary.
If only that could be arranged so easily.
Cuber shouldn't have been next, it should have been at the top of the list!
How this country could tolerate a communist Cuber just 90 miles off our coast for over 40 years is mindboggling.
What do they call a spider hole in Cuba?
Castro's final resting place.
Okay. We'll arrange that for you.
From The Boondock Saints: Now you will receive us! We do not ask for your poor or your hungry, we do not want your tired and sick; it is your corrupt we claim. It is your evil that will be met by us; with every breath, we shall hunt them down. Each day, we will spill their blood, till it bleeds down from the skies. Do not kill, do not rape, do not steal. These are principals which every man, of every faith, can embrace. These are not polite suggestions! These are codes of behavior and those of you that ignore them will pay the dearest cost. There are varying degrees of evil. We urge you lesser forms of filth not to push the bounds and cross over. It's your true corruption, into our domain. But if you do, one day you will look behind you and you would see we three. And on that day, you will reap it...and we will send you to whatever god you wish.
America to Fidel: "Nobody Cares". Be Seeing You,
Chris
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