BY JOAQUIN ORAMAS

DURING his special appearance on Cuban television and radio, President Fidel Castro referred to an article published in the US daily The Washington Post that states that a positive response to Posada Carriles’ request for asylum would undermine the credibility of that nation in the war on terror.

It went on to say that Eduardo Soto, a Miami-based lawyer who is responsible for Posada’s asylum petition, has affirmed that the terrorist is currently residing at a secret location after surreptitiously entering US territory.

The newspaper mentions that, having been trained by the CIA in the use of explosives as part of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Posada has been related for many years to, amongst other events, the sabotage of a Cuban passenger plane that caused the deaths of 73 people in 1976.

Last Monday, Democrat Representative William Delahunt from Massachusetts sent a letter to the House International Relations Committee urging it to investigate how Posada entered the country.

Given the enmity between the governments of Cuba and the United States, it is possible that US officials may have turned a blind eye to Posada’s entry into our country or worse still, helped to facilitate it, wrote Delahunt. He continued that whether or not this is true and Posada is allowed to remain in the country, US credibility with respect to the war on terror would be shattered… because it would suggest that they share the beliefs of Al Qaeda supporters and Iraqi insurgents in the sense that a terrorist for some is a freedom fighter for others.

In his reflections, Fidel referred to different articles published in the United States, many of which described the Cuban terrorist in positive terms.

Prior to the Cuban president’s address at the International Conference Center in Havana where the event took place, images of some of the terrorist attacks perpetrated by the CIA and Posada Carriles were projected onto a large screen for the benefit of those gathered.