The Hindu : International : Castro slams Peru, Mexico for supporting U.S.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 05, 2004

International

International

Castro slams Peru, Mexico for supporting U.S.

By Jo Tuckman—

MEXICO CITY, MAY 4. Mexico and Peru have recalled their ambassadors from Havana after the Cuban President, Fidel Castro, launched a scathing attack on the two countries' support for America.

Mr, Castro used his May Day speech on Saturday to lambast both for voting in favour of the annual U.S.-sponsored resolution criticising Cuba's human rights record at a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

He said Mexico's ``prestige and influence in Latin America and the world'' had been ``reduced to ashes''.

Capitulation to U.S. priorities, he said, meant the U.S. border with Mexico ``no longer stops at the Rio Bravo''.

Criticism of Peru's vote was topped off with a personal attack on the country's President, Alejandro Toledo.

``He cannot run anything,'' Mr. Castro said of the Peruvian leader whose popularity ratings have slipped to 8 per cent. ``He leaves that to the transnational corporations and the oligarchs.''

Mexico and Peru responded by immediately calling their representatives in Havana home and ordering the Cuban ambassadors in Mexico City and Lima to leave.

Mexico's Foreign Minister, Luis Ernest Derbez, said the two countries had not discussed their responses. Cuba's Foreign Ministry said the action taken by Mexico was ``inspired by arrogance, haughtiness, obstinacy and lies''. The statement did not mention Peru.

The U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, described Mr. Castro's charges as ``outrageous.''

Speculation is rife that the Cuban leader is planning a showdown at the summit between European and Latin American leaders in the Mexican city of Guadalajara at the end of this month.

Mr. Castro walked out of another summit in Mexico two years ago, stealing the show just hours before the U.S. President, George W. Bush, arrived.

He later revealed an embarrassing taped phone conversation between himself and the Mexican President, Vicente Fox, in apparent retaliation for Mexico's first vote against Cuba in the U.N. Geneva commission.

Apparently wanting to get Mr. Castro out of the country before Mr. Bush arrived, Mr. Fox could be heard inviting the Cuban to lunch as long as he ``eats up and goes''.

While ties between Cuba and Peru have always been somewhat erratic, Mexico's decision to demote the relationship to the level of charges d'affaires is the most dramatic sign yet that a tradition of friendship is over.

Mexico was one of Cuba's most reliable allies in the Cold War, resisting U.S. pressure to criticise the regime or break off diplomatic ties completely, as most Latin American states did at one stage or another.

Mr. Castro refrained from providing significant support in decades gone by to Mexican Marxist guerillas seeking to bring down the Government.

But relations began to cool as soon as Mr. Fox took office in December 2000.

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