Friday, July 17, 2009

Fidel Castro on What Must Be Demanded of the United States

Reflections of Fidel Castro

What must be demanded of the United States

(Taken from CubaDebate)

THE meeting in Costa Rica did not lead and could not lead to peace. The people of Honduras are not at war; only the coup perpetrators are using weapons against them. They should be called on to end their war on the people. Such a meeting between Zelaya and the coup leaders would only serve to demoralize the constitutional president and wear down the energies of the Honduran people.

World public opinion knows what has taken place in that country via footage circulated by international television, fundamentally Telesur which, without losing a second, faithfully transmitted each and every one of the events that took place in Honduras, the speeches given and the unanimous agreements against the coup by international agencies.

The world was able to see the blows rained down on men and women, the thousands of teargas grenades fired on the crowds, the gross gestures with weapons of war and live rounds to intimidate, wound or kill citizens.

The idea that Hugo Llorens, the U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, was unaware of or discouraged the coup is absolutely untrue. He knew about it, as did the U.S. military advisors, who didn’t stop their training of Honduran troops for one minute.

It is now known that idea of promoting a peace move initiated in Costa Rica emerged from the offices of the State Department in order to contribute to the consolidation of the military coup.

The coup was conceived of and organized by unscrupulous individuals on the extreme right, dependable officials of George W. Bush and promoted by him.

All of them, without exception, have a bulky file of anti-Cuba activities. Hugo Llorens, the ambassador in Honduras since mid-2008, is a Cuban-American. He is part of a group of aggressive U.S. ambassadors in Central America comprising Robert Blau, ambassador in El Salvador; Stephen McFarland in Guatemala; and Robert Callahan in Nicaragua, all appointed by Bush in the months of July and August of 2008.

The four are continuing the line of Otto Reich and John Negroponte who, together with Oliver North, were responsible for the dirty war in Nicaragua and the death squads in Central America, which cost the peoples of the region tens of thousands of lives.

Negroponte was Bush’s representative at the United Nations, czar of U.S. intelligence and finally assistant secretary of state. In distinct ways, both of them were behind the Honduras coup.

The Soto Cano base in that country, headquarters of the Joint Task Force Bravo belonging to the Armed Forces of the United States, is the central support point of the coup d’état in Honduras.

The United States has the sinister plan of creating five further military bases around Venezuela, on the pretext of replacing the Manta one in Ecuador.

The ridiculous adventure of the coup d’état in Honduras has created a really complicated situation in Central America, which will not be resolved by traps, deceptions and lies.

Every day, new details are emerging of the implication of the United States in that action, which will also have serious repercussions in all of Latin America.

The idea of a peace initiative based in Costa Rica was transmitted to the president of that country from the State Department, when Obama was in Moscow and when he stated, in a Russian university, that the only president of Honduras was Manuel Zelaya.

The coup perpetrators were in a difficult situation. The initiative transmitted to Costa Rica sought the objective of saving them. It is obvious that every day of delay has a cost for the constitutional president and tends to dilute the exceptional international support that he has received.

The Yankee maneuver does not increment the possibilities of peace, but exactly the opposite, it reduces them and the danger of violence is growing, given that the peoples of our America will never resign themselves to the fate programmed for them.

When Micheletti, the de facto president, proclaimed yesterday that he is prepared to resign from his post if Zelaya resigns, I knew that the State Department and the military coup leaders had agreed to replace him and send him back to Congress as part of the maneuver.

The only correct thing to do at this point is to demand that the government of the United States ends its intervention, stops lending military support to the coup perpetrators and withdraws its Task Force from Honduras.

What is being demanded of the Honduran people, in the name of peace, is the negation of all the principles that have been fought for by all the nations of this hemisphere.

"Respect for the right of others is peace, said [Benito] Juárez.

Fidel Castro Ruz
July 16, 2009
1:12 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

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