United Nations: Cuba's foreign minister warned US President George W Bush that if the United States wants to bring about regime change by force in Cuba, his country is prepared. The conflict will not only jeopardize Cuba's stability but US stability as well, Felipe Perez Roque said yesterday in an interview with The Associated Press. "We are not threatening and we never bluff," he said. "We respect the United States, but we demand respect for ourselves, and we would defend our country from an attempt to have foreign aggression."
He said Bush's first major policy speech on Cuba in four years, in which the president challenged the international community to help the people of the communist island shed Fidel Castro s rule and become a free society, indicated the president might be prepared to use force. "Bush said in last week's speech that "the operative word in our future dealings with Cuba is not stability. The operative word is freedom." Perez Roque singled out the "irresponsible phrase." "If that is the expression of the decisions that the president may be planning to make, it would be very dangerous both for Cuba and for the US, because if that's the expression of the attempt to bring about a regime change by force in Cuba, that will clash with the resilience of the Cuban people, and the people are prepared," Perez Roque said. In Cuba, he said, more than 90 per cent of the 11.5 million people support "the genuine revolution" that began in 1959 when Castro toppling dictator Fulgencio Batista.
