Cuban President speaks at anti-U.S. rally
( 2002-06-02 10:54 ) (7 )

A drenched Cuban President Fidel Castro on Saturday defied the rain and U.S. President George W. Bush - who he referred to as Mr. W.- to defend the social gains of his 1959 revolution.

Speaking at a rally in eastern Cuba, Castro rejected criticism from Bush, who has vowed to maintain trade sanctions against the Caribbean island nation until its one-party communist state allows greater political freedom.

"Don't you be a fool, Mr. W. Show some respect for the minds of people who are capable of thinking," Castro said in a 26-minute speech in eastern Cuba that he continued despite a torrential shower.

Bush, backed by anti-Castro exiles in Florida, called Cuba's government a "tyranny" in speeches in Washington and Miami last month.

Castro said statistics showed Cuba led Latin America in social services, stating that no Cuban child goes begging in the streets and Cuban youth are not "poisoned" by drugs.

"This is not a tyranny, as Mr. W has claimed. It is justice, it is true equality among human beings," Castro, 75, told the crowd, which officials said numbered 400,000 people.

"For Mr. W, democracy only exists where money solves everything," he said, speaking in his native province of Holguin, 500 miles (800 km) east of Havana.

’CRIMINAL BLOCKADE'

Castro said $25,000-a-plate political fund-raising dinners in the United States were "an insult to the billions of people living in the poor, hungry and underdeveloped world."

The bearded Cuban leader, his trademark green military fatigues soaked with rain, said the "criminal blockade" Bush promised to tighten would strengthen Cuban resolve to defend its socialist society.

Tens of thousands of Cubans were taken overnight to the early-morning rally from neighboring provinces in buses and open trucks. The crowd waved Cuban flags, chanted revolutionary slogans and shouted "Fidel, Fidel."

Bush has vowed to maintain the four-decade U.S. trade embargo against Cuba until free elections are allowed, and his administration plans to step up funding for independent groups on the island of 11 million people.

Cuba's small and fragmented dissident movement opposes the U.S. trade sanctions and does not want Washington's financial support, saying it would stigmatize them as counter-revolutionaries.