Cuba’s communist leader Fidel Castro accused United States President George Bush of ordering him killed, even before moving into the White House, in an article published in the Granma newspaper on Monday.
”The issue of the accusation related to his plan to kill me comes from before he used fraud to steal the victory from another candidate,” the convalescing Castro (80) said of Bush.
Castro, who claims to hold a sort of world record in evading assassination plots, at about 650 in his count, recalled in an opinion piece in the Cuban Communist Party newspaper that he reported the alleged plot publicly on August 5 2000 in a speech in Pinar del Rio.
Of all the US presidents since 1959, Castro said Jimmy Carter (1977 to 1981) ordered no hit, and that he had no knowledge of former president Bill Clinton (1993 to 2001) ever having given a green light for a Castro assassination bid.
Castro’s recollections come a week after he insisted in an essay entitled They will never have Cuba that Cuba would keep making and importing weaponry to stave off a US invasion.
Fidel Castro, who took power in Cuba in January 1959, is still on the mend from major intestinal surgery last year and handed over power to his brother Raul 11 months ago.
Since March 29, he has written more than 20 policy articles in Granma and other official government publications, including articles on global warming, ethanol and US imperialism. — Sapa-AFP