CNN. September 18, 2000. Web posted at: 10:15 PM EDT (0215 GMT)
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Cuban President Fidel Castro said in a television interview broadcast Monday in the Middle East that his country is ready to make peace with the United States only if it changes imperialist ways and respects the rights of other peoples.
Castro's comments follow a visit to New York earlier this month, where he was among 160 world leaders to attend the U.N. Millennium summit. During the visit, Castro's first in five years, he shook hands with U.S. President Bill Clinton -- his first handshake with a U.S. president.
"We are not ready for reconciliation with the United States, and I will not reconcile with the imperialist system," Castro, who rarely grants interviews, told Qatar-based Al-Jazeera Television. "But if the American people and their government are ready to respect the rights of
others, we are ready, in this case, to work so that peace prevails. Otherwise, their will be no reconciliation"
For decades, relations between communist Cuba and the United States have been frigid. The United States has kept agricultural and other trade sanctions on Cuba since July 1963, longer than on any other country but North Korea.
In July, The U.S. Congress voted to allow unrestricted U.S. food and drug sales to Cuba and to allow Americans to travel freely to their island neighbor. The vote was a major victory for farm, business and other groups trying to ease the 4-decade-old sanctions against Castro's government.
"For the past 40 years I have been struggling against the world's most powerful and dangerous force, and against the continuous embargo," Castro, wearing an olive-green military uniform, said in Spanish that Al-Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular all-news station, had translated
into Arabic.
Castro also said Cuba wouldn't collapse like the Soviet Union did "because they became busy with bureaucracy and lost contact with the people, which is something that never happened here."
"Communist rule is still valid for the future because it is the most equitable system," Castro said. "We are defending our culture better than any other country because other countries are being subjected to a Western cultural invasion."
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.
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