FIDEL Castro has accused the United States of using a vulgar excuse of fight against narcotics to finalise a cold war aimed at total domination of the world.

Fidel on Wednesday noted that the cultivation, production and trafficking of drugs today constituted a global problem that extended from South America to Africa and that it reigned even in Afghanistan where the US had massive army presence.

“For his military origin, precisely, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez knows that the fight against narcotic trafficking is a vulgar excuse of the US to justify a military agreement with Colombia involving seven bases that responds entirely to the strategic conception of the US to finalise the cold war, to extend its domination of the world,” he said.

“The air bases, the means, operating rights and the total impunity granted by Colombia to the yankee militaries and civil contractors in its territory, have nothing to do with the combat against cultivation, production and trafficking of drugs. This constitutes today a world problem. It extends not only through South American countries but also begins to extend to Africa and other areas. It already reigns in Afghanistan in spite of the massive presence of yankee (US) troops. Drugs must not be a motive to establish bases, invade countries and take violence, war and plunder to Third World countries. It is the worst environment to plant citizenry virtues and bring education, health and development to other peoples.”

Fidel said those who believed that dividing the Colombians and Venezuelans would have success in their counterrevolutionary plans deceived themselves.
He said many of the better and humbler workers in Venezuela were Colombians.
Fidel said the Bolivarian Revolution of President Chavez, had brought education, health, employment, right to citizenship and other benefits.

“Together, Venezuelans and Colombians will defend the great homeland of the liberator of our America,î he said. “Together they will fight for freedom and peace. The thousands of Cuban doctors, educators and other collaborators who fulfill their internationalist duties in Venezuela will be together with them.”

Fidel said contrary to claims published in the media that President Chavez was planning war with Colombia, the opposite was true.

He said he knew President Chavez well.
“No one like him would be more reluctant to have bloodshed between Venezuelans and Colombians, two peoples as brotherly as the Cubans who live in the east, centre and western end of our island,” Fidel explained.

He said the paramilitaries of Colombia today constituted the USA’s first clash troops against the Bolivarian Revolution.

“Chavez is a real revolutionary, deep thinker, sincere, brave and tireless worker,” Fidel said. “President Chavez He did not come to power through a coup detat. He indignantly criticised the repression and genocide of the neo-liberal governments that handed over enormous natural resources from his country to the US He suffered prison, matured and developed his ideas. He did not reach power through arms despite his military origins. He has the great merit of having initiated the difficult path of a profound social revolution starting from the so-called representative democracy and the most absolute freedom of expression when the most powerful media resources of the country were in the hands of the oligarchy and at the service of the empire’s interests.”

He said in just 11 years, Venezuela achieved the highest educational and social advances reached by any country in the world in spite of the coup and destabilisation plans and discredit imposed by the US.

Fidel said the US did not decree an economic blockade against Venezuela as it did with Cuba as it would have blockaded itself given its external energy dependence.

However, Fidel said the US had not renounced its objective of liquidating the Bolivarian social process and its generous support in petroleum resources to the countries of the Caribbean and Central America.

He said the US was against Venezuela’s broad relations with South America, China, Russia and numerous states of Asia, Africa and Europe.

Fidel said Venezuela’s relations with Cuba especially left the US at pains in view of its half-a-century blockade against Cuba.

He said President Chavez’s administration had been especially generous with Caribbean countries in moments of intensely grave energy crises.

“In the new times that we live, the revolution in Venezuela faces entirely new problems that did not exist when, almost 50 years ago, our revolution triumphed in Cuba,” Fidel said.

He said in 1959, drug trafficking, organised crime, social violence and paramilitarism barely existed.
Fidel said back then in the US, the current drug market that capitalism and the consumer society have created had not yet emerged.

“For Mexico, Central America and South America, these plagues today mean a growing tragedy that is insurmountable,” said Fidel. “To the unequal exchange, the protectionism and the looting of its natural resources, were added the trafficking of drugs and the violence of organised crime that underdevelopment, poverty, unemployment and the gigantic drug market that the US has created in these Latin American societies. The incapacity of this rich and imperial country to stop the trafficking and consumption of drugs gave way in many parts of Latin America to the cultivation of plants whose values as raw material for drugs exceeded many times those of the rest of the agricultural produce creating grave social and political problems.