Americas summit has proved to be dismal - Fidel

Americas summit has proved to be dismal - Fidel
Written by Larry Moonze in Havana, Cuba
Monday, April 06, 2009 3:32:56 PM

FORMER Cuban president Fidel Castro has said the famous Summit of the Americas to which the island is excluded has proved to be dismal.

Following his two-hour long discussion with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega who visited Cuba late last week, Castro further wondered why Cuba remained banned from the Americas meetings.

“Cuba has always shown its willingness, in new circumstances, to provide maximum cooperation with the diplomatic activities of the countries of the Caribbean and Latin America,” he said.

“Those who ought to, know this well but we cannot be asked to keep silent in the face of unnecessary and inadmissible concessions. Even stones shall speak.”

Castro disclosed that he chatted with President Ortega at length about the “famous” Summit of the Americas due from April 17 to 19 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

“Those summit meetings have a history which has certainly been rather dismal,” he charged. “The first took place in Miami, capital of the counterrevolution, the blockade and the dirty war against Cuba. That summit was held on the 10th and 11th of December in 1994. It had been convened by Bill Clinton, elected president of the United States ion November of 1992.”

Castro said at the time of the first summit, the USSR had just collapsed and Cuba was in the midst of the special period [economic downturn].

He said the Cuban counterrevolutionaries were packing their bags for their victorious return to Cuba.

Castro said former US president, the senior, George Bush had lost elections for his warmongering venture in Iraq and the elected Clinton was preparing for the post-revolutionary Cuba era in Latin America.

He said the Washington Consensus was equally in full swing.

Castro said during the meeting President Ortega gave him a large number of paragraphs that were being debated about the final declaration of the upcoming Port of Spain Summit.

He said the Organisation of American States (OAS), to which Cuba is banned since the triumph of the revolution, as the permanent secretary for the Summit of the Americas was dictating guidelines.

Castro accused the OAS of carrying the role assigned to it by

immediate past US president George W Bush. “It contains 100 paragraphs; it seems that the institution likes round numbers to sweeten the pill and give more punch to the document,” he said.

“Surely there are a great number of inadmissible concepts. It will be a litmus test for the peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America.

Could it be a step backwards? Blockade and also exclusion after 50 years of resistance? Who will assume those responsibilities? Who now demands our extinction? Could it be that they do not understand that the days of treaties excluding our people are a thing of the past?

There will be important reservations in that declaration signed by heads of state so that it can be understood that in spite of the changes attained through tough talks, there are ideas which are unacceptable to them.”