Castro praises detente

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33447, 31 January 1974, Page 17

Castro praises detente

(By

CLAUDE REGIN.

art N.Z.P.A.-Reuter correspondent.)

HAVANA, January 30. The Cuban Prime Minister (Dr Fidel Castro) today backed the Soviet Union’s policy of detente with the West and called it “an extraordinary service to humanity.” The Cuban leader, with the Soviet Communist Party chief, Mr Leonid Brezhnev, by his side, told some one million people massed in Havana’s Revolution Square, “all the nations of the world and their more conscious leaders greatly appreciate the Soviet Union’s policy of peace and its efforts at a lessening of world tensions and at putting an end to the arms race.” Mr Brezhnev, sporting a Cuban straw hat, was given a standing ovation when he

arrived on the platform to greet one of the largest rallies here since the 1959 revolution.

The rally began at 5 p.m., but all day long Cubans had converged on the Square in lorries and buses to hear Dr Castro and the Soviet leader. Dr Castro’s speech stressed Cuba’s gratitude for the aid granted by the Soviet Union since he and his bearded guerrillas ousted the proAmerican regime of the former dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Despite Dr Castro’s support of the Soviet detente policy, he still had a bitter word for the United States as he recalled how “from thousands of miles away, the Soviet Union came to the res. cue of Cuba when the United States tried to strangle the island’s economy by refusing to buy its sugar, which it had been purchasing for almost a hundred years.” But the speech was on the

whole concilatory towards the United States. The Prime Minister did not use the term “Yankee imperialism,” as he has so often in the past. He did, however, point out that there was “a very deep difference between the relations we now enjoy with the Soviet Union and those we used to have with the. United States.” The Cuban leader, who was often interrupted by prolonged bursts of applause, indirectly criticised those who say that due to its heavy economic dependence on the Soviet Union, Cuba had replaced one imperialsm with another. He said that the Soviet Union did not own Cuban plantations, mines, hotels, or banks and that no Cuban citizen worked for a Soviet firm. In an apparent attack on China as well as dissident factions within the Soviet

Union, Dr Castro spoke of “renegades of the revolutionary Left who criticise the Soviet Union,” and said this “pseudo-Left" tended to “serve the interests of imperialism.” Dr Castro also referred to Soviet military aid which, he said, had been a decisive factor in defeating the Bay pf Pigs invasion attempt of April, 1961. “Thanks to the Soviet Union, our Armed Forces are the invincible bulwark of socialism on this continent,” he said. Speaking in Russian, through ah interpreter, Mr Brezhnev then told the crowd Cuba could always count on the Soviet Union and the Socialist community despite the huge distance separating them. He insisted that Soviet military aid to Cuba was not aimed at worsening world tensions but was, in fact, a means of preserving peace.