Castro's childhood plea to US president
David Teather
"My good friend Roosevelt," the handwritten letter begins. "I
don't know very English, but I know as much as to write to you. I like
to hear radio and I am very happy because I heard in it that you will be
president for a new period."
The author of the letter then makes a somewhat forward appeal. "If you
like," the 12-year-old wrote, "give me a ten dollars bill green american,
in the letter, because never, I have not seen a ten dollars bill green
american and I would like to have one of them."
The 1940 letter from a youngster who went on to lead the Cuban
revolution in 1959 that led to less cordial relations with America is
one of the oddities on show from a forthcoming exhibition in Washington,
compiled by the US National Archives and Records Administration.
The exhibition features letters of children written to American
presidents, including a girl who wanted to keep her father at home
during the second world war.
Mr Castro's early bent toward capitalism was apparently not met with
cash. Years later he said he had been proud to receive an
acknowledgement letter that was posted on his school bulletin board.
Mr Castro toppled the military rule of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista
19 years later. He has now ruled Cuba for 45 years as a Communist state.
UN condemns
massacre of 34 people in Colombia
The United Nations on Wednesday condemned the murder of 34
people in northeastern Colombia, allegedly committed by Colombia's rebel
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a
communique that the massacre is "a crime of war because its authors gave
a premeditated death to unarmed civilians, put in a total state of
defenselessness and inferiority."
Colombian authorities held the FARC, the country's largest guerrilla
group, responsible for the killing of 34 coca harvestmen Tuesday in La
Gabarra, about 700 kilometers northeast of the capital Bogota.
The United Nations urged the FARC "to order all the members of the
organization to strictly comply with the international humanitarian law
and fully accept the recommendations of the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights."
The United Nations also expressed "its feelings of condolences and
solidarity to the relatives of the peasants who were victims of this
killing."
International humanitarian law "bans the attempts against the lives and
physical integrity of the people that do not directly participate in
hostilities," said the United Nations.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has been
operating in Bogota since 1996, thanks to an accord inked between the
Colombian government and the United Nations.
Also on Wednesday, prosecutors and forensic experts from Colombian
General Attorney's Office arrived in La Gabarra to investigate the
murder of the 34 peasants, and tried to define thec auses of the
massacre.
Gen. Carlos Alberto Ospina, Colombia's military forces commander, said
the killings were provoked by a dispute between leftist rebels and
right-wing paramilitary gunmen over the control of the production of
coca, the main ingredient of cocaine.
The peasants were sleeping in hammocks at dawn at a ranch near La
Gabarra, close to the Venezuelan border, when a group of gunmen broke
into the ranch. The armed men tied the peasants up with ropes and shot
them in an execution style.
Ospina quoted surviving peasants as saying that the guerrilla combatants
tied them up and warned them not to run, but "some of them ran and were
murdered in cold blood."
Local people told the authorities that the peasants killed were accused
of "helping" the far-right paramilitary United Self Defense Forces of
Colombia.
Some poor Colombian peasants pick coca leaf and sell it to both leftist
rebels and right-wing paramilitaries, making them targets of fighting
between military groups.
Coca leaf is the raw material for cocaine, which is the fuel of a
four-decade-old civil war, in which leftist rebels, right-wing
paramilitary forces and government troops fight one another.
The massacre at La Gabarra is considered the bloodiest since President
Alvaro Uribe took office nearly two years ago. The worst previous
killing happened in May 2002, when a mortar fired by RARC rebels landed
on a church in Bojaya, in northwest Colombia, killing 119 civilians.
Blast kills three at Brazil army barracks
Three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded Wednesday when an
explosive device to be used for training was detonated at an army
barracks in Rio de Janeiro, army spokesmen said.
The explosion occurred early Wednesday morning in the barracks of the
First Paratroops Engineering Company at a military complex on the
outskirts of Rio.
One soldier died on the spot, one on the way to hospital, and one during
emergency care. Six of the 16 wounded were in serious condition, some of
whom were badly burnt and some with their limbs torn off.
Military helicopters and local fire service vehicles immediately rushed
to the site to help after the blast. The cause of the blast was being
investigated, said army spokesmen.
Colombian government to arrest paramilitaries outside safe haven
The Colombian government said Wednesday that the arrest warrants for the
members of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) will be
valid outside the concentration zone where the peace negotiations are
due to be held.
The government said the arrests, including extradition, will not be
conducted within the concentration zone where the Colombian government
and the AUC will hold the peace talks.
The government has set a six-month timetable to reach an accord. During
that time arrest warrants will be suspended against militia commanders
provided they remain within the safe region where 23 AUC leaders and 430
of their bodyguards are staying under international supervision.
AUC Joint Chief of Staff leader Salvatore Mancuso said, "We will seize
on this immunity to socialize with all the sectors of the national and
international life in the peace process."
The Colombian government and the AUC agreed on May 13 to create a
368-square-km concentration zone in the northern department of Cordoba
with the goal of demobilizing some 13,000 members of the paramilitary
AUC by 2006.
The AUC was established in the 1980s by drug traffickers and land owners
to fight leftist guerrillas in areas where government troops had little
control. It has been active in northern Colombia, particularly in the
departments of Antioquia and Cordoba.
The AUC demobilization process will help ease Colombia's civil war, the
longest in Latin America, which kills about 3,500 people a year on
average.
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