Former Cuban president Fidel Castro published his first column in nearly nine months on Friday, urging both friends and foes to use restraint amid tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
In the brief piece published in Communist Party daily Granma and other official media, Castro warned of the impact that nuclear war could unleash in Asia and beyond. He said Havana has always been and will continue to be an ally to North Korea, but gently admonished it to consider the well-being of humankind.
“Now that you have demonstrated your technical and scientific advances, we remind you of your duty to the countries that have been your great friends, and it would not be fair to forget that such a war would affect ... more than 70 percent of the planet’s population,” he said.
Castro used stronger language in addressing Washington, saying that if fighting breaks out, US President Barack Obama’s government “would be buried by a flood of images that would present him as the most sinister figure in US history. The duty to avoid [war] also belongs to him and the people of the United States.”
North Korea has issued a series of escalating threats in recent weeks as the US and South Korea have conducted joint military exercises from beginning March, and expressed anger over UN sanctions imposed after it held a nuclear test in February. Pyongyang says it needs nuclear weapons for self-defense and on Tuesday it announced that it would restart a plutonium reactor that was shut down in 2007.
Analysts say the elevated rhetoric is probably calculated to push for concessions from South Korea, prod Washington into talks and bolster the image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
However, Castro called the situation “incredible and absurd,” and said war would cause terrible harm to the people of both Koreas and benefit no one.
“This is one of the gravest risks of nuclear war since the October Crisis in 1962 involving Cuba, 50 years ago,” he wrote, a reference to what is commonly known in the West as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Castro last published one of his columns known as Reflections on June 19 last year. In October, amid the latest round of rumors of his purportedly dire health, he said he had stopped writing them not due to illness, but because they were occupying space in official newspapers and state TV news broadcasts that was needed for other uses.
However, letters signed by him have been released periodically, including a message of condolences last month following the death of then-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a close friend and ally.
He also appeared in February at a voting station, bantering for more than an hour with poll workers, reporters and children.
Castro has been out of office since 2006, when a near-fatal intestinal ailment forced him to hand power to his younger brother, Cuban President Raul Castro.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not