NewsMax.com. UPI. Saturday, Sept. 2, 2000.
UNITED NATIONS – Cuban dictator Fidel Castro will attend the Millennium Summit next week along with more than 150 other world leaders, sources said Friday.
Asked how long Castro, who has a history of long-winded oratory, would speak, one source said with a smile, "Five minutes." That's the maximum allowed each speaker during the three-day conference, which begins Wednesday. However, Castro recently said he would be tightening his speeches
and followed through by delivering a major address in near-record time.
The last time he visited U.N. headquarters was in 1995 for ceremonies marking the world body's 50th anniversary.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard explained to reporters at a daily briefing that the United States had signed the Host Country Agreement guaranteeing visits by high-ranking members of foreign delegations "with one small caveat": Washington reserves the right to refuse visas for U.N.
meetings if doing so is in the national security interest of the United States.
One U.N. source said it was his understanding that the United States was granting a visa to Castro.
The State Department has confirmed that it received a visa application for Castro, and officials said it was "a matter of process," not a matter of decision, to grant the visa, China's Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.
Last week Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba's national assembly and a former foreign minister, was denied a visa to attend the Inter-Parliamentary Union summit in the U.N. General Assembly.
A source in Cuba's U.N. mission said that Alarcon, regarded as Havana's spokesman on relations with the United States, was denied a visa because of his extreme anti-American stance. It was also pointed out that the summit was not an official U.N. meeting.
Alarcon, however, is scheduled to speak on Cuban-U.S. relations, an event sponsored by Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank, on Sept. 12. It was not known whether he has received a visa to attend.
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