[NYTr] Fidel Castro: The Empire's Illegal Wars

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Cuban Government website via mart
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2007/ing/f011007i.html

Reflections by the Commander in Chief

THE EMPIRE’S ILLEGAL WARS

Fidel Castro Ruz

When the United States and its NATO allies started the war on Kosovo,
Cuba immediately defined her position on the front page of the
newspaper Granma, on March 26, 1999.  This was done in a Declaration of
her Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the title of "Cuba's appeal to
end NATO’s unjustified aggression against Yugoslavia."

I take essential paragraphs from that Declaration [dated March 25,
1999]:

"After a number of painful and highly manipulated political
occurrences, extended armed confrontations and complex, hardly
transparent negotiations around the issue of Kosovo, the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization finally launched its announced and brutal air
attack against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, whose peoples fought
most heroically in Europe against the Nazi hordes during World War II.

"This action, conceived of as a 'punishment of the Yugoslavian
government,' is conducted on the margin of the UN Security Council. ...

"The war launched by NATO rekindles humanity's justified fears about
the establishment of an offensive unipolar system, governed by a
warmongering empire acting as a world gendarme and capable of dragging
its political and military allies along to the most insane actions.
Something similar happened at the beginning and in the first half of
this century with the creation of militaristic blocs that brought
destruction, death and misery to Europe, dividing and weakening it,
while the United States strengthened their economic, political and
military power.

"It is worthwhile wondering whether the use and abuse of force could
solve the world problems and defend the human rights of the innocent
persons who today are dying under the missiles and bombs falling on a
small country which is part of that cultured and civilized Europe.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba strongly
condemns this aggression on Yugoslavia by NATO forces led by the United
States. ...

"At this moment of suffering and pain for the Yugoslavian peoples, Cuba
calls on the international community to mobilize its efforts to bring
an immediate end to this unjustified aggression, to avoid new and even
more deplorable losses of innocent lives and to allow this nation to
again take up the peaceful path of negotiations to solve its internal
problems, a matter which depends solely and exclusively on the
sovereign will and free determination of the Yugoslavian peoples....

"The ridiculous attempt at imposing solutions by force is incompatible
with any civilized rationale and with the essential principles of
international law.  [...]  To continue along this path, the
consequences may be unpredictable for Europe and for all of humanity."


Because of these occurrences, I had sent a message to President
Milosevic the day before, through the Yugoslavian ambassador in Havana
and our ambassador in Belgrade.

"I beg you to communicate the following to President Milosevic:

"After carefully analyzing everything that is happening and the origins
of the present dangerous conflict, we are of the view that an enormous
crime is being committed against the Serbian people. At the same time,
the aggressors are committing a huge error, which they won’t be able to
sustain if the Serbian people are capable of resisting, as they did in
their heroic struggle against the Nazi hordes.

"Unless the terribly brutal and unjustifiable attacks in the very heart
of Europe cease, world reaction will be even greater and swifter than
that triggered by the war in Vietnam.

"This time as never before in recent history, powerful forces and world
interests are aware that such behavior in international relations is
not acceptable.

"Even though I have no personal relationship with him, I have meditated
extensively on the problems of today’s world. I think that I have a
sense of history, a concept of tactics and strategy in the struggle of
a small country against a great superpower and I feel a deep hatred
towards injustice, and so I take it upon myself to transmit to him an
idea in just three words:

“Resist, resist, resist!"


Havana, October 1, 2007, 6:14 p.m.