PRESIDENT Fidel Castro has challenged and called on Bush, the CIA, the 33 U.S. intelligence agencies, the thousands of banks in the world and the "servants" of Forbes magazine, which claims that Fidel has a fortune of $900 million, to prove that he has even one dollar in an overseas account.

In exchange for just one shred of evidence, he said that he would offer them everything that they have tried and failed to do over almost half a century, during which time they have tried to destroy the Revolution and assassinate him via hundreds of conspiracies. "I’m giving you everything you’ve tried," he said, "and don’t come with your foolishness and wayside stories. Show me an account, of just one dollar," he emphasized.

"If they can prove that I have one single dollar, I will resign from all my responsibilities and the duties I am carrying out; they won’t need any more plans or transitions, if they can prove that I have one single dollar," the revolutionary leader said emphatically.

"They’ve gotten themselves in a real fix with those lies, and that Gordian knot must be broken, and we’re going to break it, without the slightest doubt," he affirmed, referring to the U.S. publication attributing him with all the returns of the country’s public enterprises.

"Why would I want money, if I’m soon to be 80 and I didn’t want it before?" Fidel asked, adding that during his life he had entrenched himself in principles and had never abandoned them.

He said that he had been calculating the number of suitcases it would take to carry around that amount of money, and commented that it would be about 1,000. "Who took them? On what airplane? Who carried them, who escorted them? How could I be taking out money for so many years? They are stupid, aside from the moral arguments that could be brandished."

"It’s simply an insult," he added. He accused them of wanting to make him look like one of the thieves that they nursed. "Where is Mobuto’s money? Where is the Somoza family’s money?" Fidel said that in the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars stolen via U.S. banks. "There they are: bring out the lists, publish them," he said.

Fidel said what was much more horrible than "painting" him as a thief was making him seem to be betraying the dead, those who died in the Moncada attack, aboard the Granma, in the Sierra Maestra, in the Escambray, in the Bay of Pigs, on internationalist missions or defending the country from terrorist attacks. It would be like betraying entire generations who have fought, he emphasized.

The president added that what the Forbes "bandits" should publish is his Olympic record, throughout history, of being the person whom the most powerful empire on Earth has tried to assassinate the most times.

He noted the contrast that while those infamies against Cuba and its leaders are being churned out, the country is working on a program that will enable millions of Latin Americans to receive restorative eye surgery.

Referring to the thousands of patients who have benefited from Operation Miracle, Fidel asked what those people would think when they read the newspapers talking about his personal wealth. "It is a campaign to make me look like a thief," he said, adding that it had a goal: to destroy Cuba, to make Castro look like a crook so that nobody will acknowledge anything that is done to benefit others, even though we are a country that has some 25,000 health professionals working free of charge in a large number of countries.

"And that is because we have human capital, and we certainly can rely on $100 billion in human capital," he commented.