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| Sunday, 12 June 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Popular front against terrorism : Fidel Castro launches new initiative by Jayatilleke de Silva
Convention Palace, Havana was a hive of activity on June 2 and 3. Academics, intellectuals, men and women of arts and science numbering some 700 gathered there and deliberated on the practice of governments and their imperial masters in using terrorism to subvert people's aspirations, to deny them basic necessities and fundamental rights, to safeguard perpetrators of violence against the people by means of impunity granted to them. Victims of terrorism representing numerous countries, particularly those representing Latin America presented moving testimonies of their plight and exposed the attempts by the Empire to silence them. Using available de-classified documents of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other state agencies as well as documents that have been found in the state bodies in Venezuela, Chile and other countries where the dictatorships were overthrown by the people the participants at the International Meeting against Terrorism for Truth and Justice placed before the world substantial evidence of coordinated repressive action against the people by authorities in many countries with the assistance of the United States of America. For example, the Meeting was presented with comprehensive evidence regarding the Condor Plan, which was initiated, coordinated and carried out by the United States in collaboration of several Latin American regimes. Beginning with a visit by then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Latin America in the beginning of the 1970s the Plan encompassed Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil and later Argentina. It included the exchange of information and intelligence relating to political opponents in order to identify, locate and eliminate them. A document dated September 28, 1976 declassified in the US says " a third and more secret phase of the Condor Operation was the training of member countries special groups who travel to any part of the world, to countries not included in the agreement, in order to inflict punishment, including murder, on terrorists or supporters of terrorist organizations from member countries of the Condor Operation." It is in this way that former Chilean Foreign Minister Letellier was killed in Washington. It was in the US Army School of the Americas that most security forces personnel attached to the Condor Operation were trained. The Meeting also paid special attention to the conspiracy of silence maintained by the international media in relation to the acts of terrorism conducted by the organs of state terrorism in most countries. Special attention was paid to the training, assistance and protection provided by the US to special terrorist leaders like Luis Posadas Cariles who is currently in the US. The participants also appealed to the US to extradite Posada carriles to Venezuela as requested by Venezuela and Cuba and denounced attempts to send him to a third country. The Meeting concluded with a decision to set up a Coordinated Front in Latin America to fight international terrorism initiated and supported by the US despite the loud proclamations of President George W, Bush to carry on a War on Terror. The latter had actually led to the destruction of countries and peoples, subjugation of their sovereignty and independence and exploitation of their resources as vividly evidenced by events in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Fidel Castro of Cuba, Vice President Hose Vicente Rangel,
Leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front Daniel Ortega, Leader of
the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front of El Salvador Schaffick
Handel and many other leaders attended the Meeting. |
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