WORLD / America
Cuba hits newly released CIA documents
(AP)
Updated: 2007-06-30 11:16
Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, left, talks to Cuba's acting
President Raul Castro, center, and Ricardo Alarcon, President of the
National Assembly, during a session of the National Assembly of Popular
Power in Havana, Friday June 29, 2007.[AP]
HAVANA - Cuba's parliament said Friday that a 47-year-old plot to
assassinate Fidel Castro still reflects U.S. policy toward the island.
The National Assembly unanimously approved a resolution condemning CIA
documents made public this week that described the agency's attempt in
1960 to use mobsters and poison pills to kill Castro.
"What the CIA recognizes is not old history. It is present-day reality
and the facts show it," the resolution said.
Acting President Raul Castro, seated next to the empty chair of his
recuperating older brother Fidel, presided as the legislature passed a
declaration that "the CIA documents reveal part of the efforts to kill
comrade Fidel Castro and bring death and pain to our people."
"The conduct of the Bush government clearly shows its intention to keep
employing the worst possible tactics against Cuba."
Revelations about the CIA plot were among hundreds of pages of CIA
internal reports, known as "the family jewels," released this week.
The documents show that in August 1960, the CIA recruited an ex-FBI agent
to approach mobster Johnny Roselli to take part in a plot against Castro,
who took power in January 1959.
The agency gave him six poison pills, which they tried unsuccessfully to
have other people put in Castro's food. The plot was scrapped after the
failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961, and U.S.
authorities retrieved the poison pills.
U.S. law has forbidden official assassination attempts since the
administration of Gerald Ford, and Washington denies it has attempted to
kill Castro since then.
Still, Havana officials say there have been more than 600 documented
attempts to kill Castro over the decades. Now 80, Cuba's "Maximum Leader"
has not been seen in public since handing power to a provisional
government headed by his younger brother while recovering from intestinal
surgery last July.
National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon said later Friday that, "God
willing, (Castro) will live to see the regime change in the United States
that has begun" �� evidently referring to the U.S. presidential
elections. "That country has to change because its people deserve
something better, something more decent."
Alarcon's comments played off an exchange of statements this week by
Castro and President Bush mentioning the "good Lord" in references to the
80-year-old leader's health.
In a statement published in official newspapers Friday, Castro quipped
that divine intervention may have spared him from U.S. attempts on his
life.
"Now I understand why I survived Bush's plans and those of presidents who
ordered my assassination," Castro wrote. "The good Lord protected me."
He was sarcastically referring to Bush's statement Thursday that "one day
the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away."
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