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Castro
charges Bush ordered him killed before he
took office
Yahoo! News. Isabel Sanchez.
HAVANA, 25 (AFP) - Cuba's communist leader
Fidel Castro accused US President George
W. Bush of ordering him killed even before
moving into the White House. "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
in an article published in the newspaper
Granma Monday.
Castro, who claims to hold a sort of world
record in evading assassination plots, at
some 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 (1977-1981) ordered no
hit, and that he had no knowledge of former
president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) ever
having given a green light for a Castro
assassination bid.
Castro's recollections come a week after
he insisted in an essay entitles "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.
Castro turns 81 on August 13 and has not
appeared in public since his July 26 operation
for intestinal trouble. Castro's brother
Raul Castro, 76, took the helm of the country
last July 31.
Cuba does not reveal much detail about
Fidel Castro's health, citing national security
concerns.
Fidel Castro revealed Monday however that
he had been "between life and death"
when he handed power to his brother Raul.
"For many years I was able to survive,
by chance, the empire's killing machine,"
he wrote in another editorial in Granma,
referring to the US government.
"Soon it will be a year since I fell
sick and, when I was between life and death,
expressed in the Proclamation of July 31,
2006: 'I do not have the slightest doubt
that our people and our revolution will
fight until the last drop of blood,"
Castro wrote.
His close ally Bolivian President Evo
Morales said in an interview published in
Chile this week that Fidel Castro underwent
at least 10 surgeries since taking ill.
Castro has appeared in official video and
still images, first in a bathrobe and then
in a track suit, appearing lately to have
regained some of the weight he lost after
intestinal surgery.
Since March 29, Fidel Castro has written
more than 20 policy articles in Granma and
other official government publications,
including articles on global warming, ethanol,
and US imperialism.
Wednesday, Cuba -- targeted by US efforts
to isolate it economically and diplomatically
-- said a European Union call for dialogue
was a step in the right direction. But it
also demanded the EU give up once and for
all the idea of reimposing sanctions against
the Americas' only one-party communist country.
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