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'Bush is obsessed with Cuba'
25/10/2007 07:21 - (SA)
Havana - Ailing leader Fidel Castro rejected US President George W Bush's call for change in Cuba even before it was delivered on Wednesday, saying Havana's communist government and citizens, and not Washington, would determine their political future.
Castro, who addressed Bush directly in one of his recent essays, said: "Bush is obsessed with Cuba.
"Don't attack others, don't threaten humanity with nuclear war. People will defend themselves and in that inferno we will all perish."
In his first standalone address on Cuba in four years, Bush spoke of a post-Castro Cuba where people would choose a representative government and enjoy basic freedoms, with support from a broad international coalition.
"Now is the time to support the democratic movement growing on the island," Bush said in his speech at the US State Department.
Castro, who temporarily ceded power to his constitutional successor and brother Raul in July 2006 after undergoing intestinal surgery, has not been seen in public for more than a year and it is unclear whether he will return to power.
Washington's decades-old economic embargo on Cuba chokes off most trade between the two countries.
Bush asked Congress to maintain the embargo, which has come under scrutiny and calls for reassessment from some lawmakers.
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