Cuba Urges NAM to Unity
Cuban First Vice President Raul Castro reiterated on Friday President Fidel Castro´s call to unity and cohesion of the Non Aligned Movement, and defense of the poor countries´ rights to development, life, and future.Chavez Proposes Bank of the South

Speaking at the opening session of the 14th NAM Summit of heads of state or government, Raul Castro said the current international situation is characterized by irrational attempts at world control, and defended the validity of the non-alignment.

He quoted Fidel Castro´s speech to the NAM Summit in Havana 27 years ago, when he insisted on unity and demanded economic justice for our nations to stop domination of our resources and the sacking of the sweat of our brows.

Raul Castro asserted that the only world superpower, the United States, with their allies´ complicity, shows the need to defend these principles and purposes, which determined the foundation of NAM in 1961.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces Minister, to whom Fidel Castro temporarily delegated his duties due to his health condition, spoke as the head of the Cuban delegation to the summit.

He said NAM postulates: defense of peace, active opposition to war and threats, essential democratization of international institutions, especially the UN Security Council, defense of our values and the necessary plurality in this disparate world, where each people have the right to choose their political, economic, and social system according to national interests, must be respected and safeguarded.

After emphasizing the need to defend the rights of immigrants in the industrialized world, and the struggle against exploitation, racism, and xenophobia, he savaged the building of walls, which symbolize a new apartheid.

The head of the Cuban delegation denounced the US double standard in the struggle against terrorism and the buildup of arms, and expressed his solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples, victims of aggression by Israel, with Washington´s conspiracy.

We all know who supports the Israeli government economically and militarily, who vetoes UN Security Council resolution proposals again and again, or who obstructs the meetings of this organization to analyze its brutal behavior, he asserted.

Raul Castro insisted that non-alignment also entails combating the current world economic order, in which neoliberalism is the reason more than 300 million people, the poorest of the poor, barely account for 1.3 percent of world consumption.

The social panorama of our peoples is more terrifying every day, the first vice president continued, and deplored that an inhabitant of Sub Saharan Africa lives an average of 33 years less than someone from industrialized countries.

Eleven million children die annually, most of avoidable diseases, costing a few cents; pandemic AIDS decimates entire nations in the developing world, where almost all the 852 million starving people, 876 million illiterate adults, and 325 million children without schools live, he highlighted.