STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Have you visited eBayTM lately? The Worlds Marketplace where you can buy and sell practically anything keeps getting better. From consumer electronics to movies, find it all on eBay. What are you waiting for? Try eBay today. http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/ebay ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [Via Communist Internet... http://www.egroups.com/group/Communist-Internet ] . . ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2001 12:59 AM Subject: Yugoslavia. Castro Brands Milosevic Detention 'Illegal' From: "mart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friday June 29 4:49 PM ET Cuba's Castro Brands Milosevic Detention 'Illegal' By Nelson Acosta HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba's President Fidel Castro, one of the few world leaders to back ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, said on Friday his handover to a U.N. war crimes court broke international law. ``The sending of Milosevic over there is illegal, it does not correspond with international laws,'' the communist leader told reporters, stressing, however, that ``it's not my role to judge'' and that he did not know Milosevic personally. Castro, who fiercely opposed NATO-led bombing of Yugoslavia two years ago, added that it was ``madness to concede the right of extra-territorial action for their penal laws and judicial authorities to NATO and the powerful nations.'' He was speaking at the end of a protest rally outside the U.S. diplomatic mission where more than 30,000 state-mobilized Havana residents demanded the freedom of five Cuban agents jailed in the United States on spy-related charges. Castro said Milosevic was ``paying the price for not having resisted three or four weeks longer'' during the NATO bombing ''because that war was planned for seven days ... NATO didn't have plans or calculations for a longer resistance.'' The 11-week-long NATO air campaign came in response to Yugoslav army action against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. ``If he had fought four weeks more, the ground troops would have had to intervene in Kosovo, and the Yugoslav army, the Serb army, was intact,'' Castro added. ``However, this man did not resist the pressures. They squeezed him, they forced him into a sort of surrender, and the war was over.'' The transfer to The Hague of Milosevic, who ruled for more than a decade, delighted many Western nations but displeased some of Belgrade's traditional allies like Russia. Referring to another internationally famous detainee -- Peru's disgraced spy-master Vladimiro Montesinos, who was caught in Venezuela at the weekend and is now in jail in Lima -- -- Castro noted his close links to the United States. CIA LINKS ``Everyone knew his close relations with the CIA and the U.S. authorities,'' Castro said. ``He was the prototype of the efficient official, but he had to flee ... Now, I think, he will occupy a very prominent position in jail.'' Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet, who is waiting for a court to decide if he can be tried for human rights' abuses in his homeland, was also a U.S. puppet, Castro said. ``Pinochet is nothing more than a servant of the United States. They accuse him, they capture him, but none of his accomplices appear anywhere,'' he said. Castro himself is also termed a ``dictator'' by his foes, particularly in the fiercely anti-communist Cuban American community in Florida where there have been moves to indict him for alleged ``genocide'' and rights' abuses on the island. The 74-year-old Cuban leader has laughed that off as ridiculous, but warned he will fight to the death if there is ever any attempt to arrest him. He underlined that fighting spirit in his comments Friday, warning President Bush's administration that Cuba will not bow to pressure to reform its socialist system and would resist any military aggression. ``Cuba will never surrender if the country is invaded. Cuba would negotiate only the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the aggressors,'' he said. Although there has been no serious attempt to invade Cuba since the failed expedition by a CIA-backed exile force at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the ruling Communist Party frequently invokes the possibility of a U.S.-led intervention. ``Cuba would have resisted not just four weeks more, but 40 years more,'' he said, supposing it found itself in a similar situation as the air strikes on Yugoslavia in 1999. ``Many of us would have died. I say it like this because I know the people, and the more these people are attacked, the more they will resist. Their spirit will grow,'' he said. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
