Bush plotting to kill me, claims Castro

Fidel Castro accused President George Bush today of plotting with Miami exiles to assassinate him as part of the White House’s hardening policies against the communist-run island.

“We know that Mr Bush has committed himself to the mafia ... to assassinate me,” the Cuban president said, using the term commonly employed here to describe anti-Castro Cuban-Americans.

Castro’s comments came at the end of a 5 1/2 hour speech that began on Thursday night and continued into early Friday at the closing of a conference bringing together activists across the region who oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The Cuban leader didn’t back up his accusations with specific details.

Castro has accused past US presidential administrations of seeking to assassinate him. During Castro’s early years in power, there were numerous documented cases of US sponsored attempts on his life.

But assassination of foreign leaders as US policy was later banned in 1976 by an executive order signed by then President Gerald Ford and reinforced by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Castro also criticised the Bush administration’s Commission for a Free Cuba - a panel set up last October and headed by US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

When Bush announced the commission, Powell suggested that the goal is not to ease Castro out but to plan a strategy for Cuba once the 77-year-old leader is no longer in power.

“I can die a natural death or I can die a planned death,” Castro said. “It really doesn’t matter to me how I die, but I will surely die fighting.”

The Bush administration has progressively hardened its policies toward Cuba in recent years, particularly with the approach of this year’s presidential elections.

Cuban authorities charge that much of that hardening is aimed at wooing the important electoral vote in Florida, home to most of the Cuban-American exiles living in the United States.

For more than four decades, the two countries have been without diplomatic ties, and a US trade embargo against the island makes most trade between the nations impossible, with the exception of direct American sales of farm products.