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Posted on 06/21/2002 2:27:16 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro's government said on Thursday it will adopt amendments enshrining its communist system in the national constitution to counter threats from President Bush.
Rejecting U.S. demands that the island open up to democracy and a market economy, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon said Bush -- backed by anti-Castro exiles in Florida -- wanted to destroy Cuba's revolution and reverse half a century of social gains.
"We will affirm that the political, economic and social bases of our constitution are unchangeable," Alarcon said at a rally in Havana's Revolution Square where he received 23 truck-loads of signatures supporting the amendments.
The 8.2 million signatures, amounting to 98 percent of Cuba's voting population, were gathered since Saturday in a campaign that dissidents said was aimed at crushing their own proposals for internal reform.
Alarcon left no doubt that the National Assembly, Cuba's rubber-stamp parliament, will approve the changes when it meets on July 5, making the one-party workers state "untouchable."
"We will affirm that our relations with other states must be based on strict respect for our independence and sovereignty and that we will never negotiate under foreign aggression, threat or pressure," he said.
The signatures were gathered at neighborhood watch committees and many Cubans said they had no choice but to sign up or be marked as counterrevolutionaries and lose benefits at a time of economic crisis.
Cuba's small dissident movement saw the signature campaign as a move to stamp out their Varela Project, a moderate proposal seeking a referendum on greater civil liberties for Cuba's 11 million inhabitants.
The Varela Project, which has never been publicized by Cuba's state-controlled media, would ask Cubans if they favor freedom of speech and assembly, the right to own a business and an amnesty for political prisoners.
The dissident petition, backed by 11,020 signatures, was handed in last month to the National Assembly, which is not expected to act on it.
BACK TO BATISTA
Officials in the ruling Communist Party said the dissident plan was financed by the United States. They maintain that their signature campaign was a response to Bush's provocations and not to internal dissent.
In speeches in Washington and Miami, Bush said he would not "underwrite tyranny" and vowed to enforce a four-decade-old trade embargo until Cuba allowed democratic change.
Alarcon said Bush wanted to return Cuba to the days of the Batista dictatorship before Castro's 1959 revolution when illiteracy, poverty and racial discrimination were widespread and women had not been emancipated.
Alarcon, who is Castro's main adviser on U.S. affairs, said Cuba was threatened by Bush's warning that the United States could take preemptive actions against countries in its war on international terrorism.
Washington keeps Cuba on a list of states that sponsor terrorism, even though the economically battered island has long given up attempts to export its revolution to Africa and Latin America.
Bush's plan to step up funding of independent groups in Cuba was a threat to create a "fifth column" of "traitors" on the island, Alarcon said.
Defending Cuban socialism as "true democracy of the people," Alarcon criticized the U.S. electoral college system that enabled Bush to win the presidency without obtaining more ballots than his rival in the popular vote.
Youth leaders speaking at the rally said Cubans would not allow "imperialist capitalism" to return to Cuba.
"Let our enemies and future generations know that this is our truth: socialism or death," said high school student leader Claudia Torres
The people signed because they knew Castro would make up the numbers he wanted, with or without their participation. Not signing would have left them at the mercy of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Castro's communist block watch snitches and enforcers.
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