Fidel Castro to North Korea: nuclear war will benefit no one

Retired Cuban leader sternly cautions North Korea and US of dangers of nuclear war in first column in nearly nine months.

Retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro published his first column in nearly nine months on Friday, urging both friends and foes to use restraint amid tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

In the brief piece published in Communist Party daily Granma and other official media, Castro warned of the impact that nuclear war could unleash in Asia and beyond. He said Havana has always been and will continue to be an ally to North Korea, but gently admonished it to consider the well-being of humankind.

"Now that you have demonstrated your technical and scientific advances, we remind you of your duty to the countries that have been your great friends, and it would not be fair to forget that such a war would affect ... more than 70% of the planet's population," he said.

Castro used stronger language in addressing Washington, saying that if fighting breaks out, President Barack Obama's government "would be buried by a flood of images that would present him as the most sinister figure in US history. The duty to avoid (war) also belongs to him and the people of the United States."

North Korea has issued a series of escalating threats in recent weeks as the United States and South Korea have conducted joint military exercises beginning in March, and expressed anger over U.N. sanctions imposed after it held a nuclear test in February. Pyongyang says it needs nuclear weapons for self-defense, and on Tuesday it announced it would restart a plutonium reactor that was shut down in 2007.

Analysts say the elevated rhetoric is probably calculated to push for concessions from South Korea, prod Washington into talks and bolster the image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

But Castro called the situation "incredible and absurd," and said war would cause terrible harm to the people of both Koreas and benefit no one.

"This is one of the gravest risks of nuclear war since the October Crisis in 1962 involving Cuba, 50 years ago," he wrote, a reference to what is known in English as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Castro last published one of his columns known as "Reflections" on June 19, 2012. In October, amid the latest round of rumors of his purportedly dire health, he said he had stopped writing them not due to illness but because they were occupying space in official newspapers and state TV news broadcasts that was needed for other uses. More

 

Next Moves on North Korea

North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il may be gone, but the dangers posed by Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs persist. Although the long-term future of the regime under the new young ruler, Kim Jong Un, remains uncertain, it is clearly in the United States’ interest to get the much-delayed denuclearization process back on track.

A third round of U.S.-North Korean bilateral talks was to have been held in December but was delayed as news of the elder Kim’s demise broke. Those talks were expected to lead to U.S. food assistance to the impoverished North and the renewal of six-party negotiations addressing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Now, as the symbolically important 100th anniversary of the birth of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung approaches, it is vital that President Barack Obama re-engage the North Korean regime and re-establish a verifiable freeze of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs before they take yet another turn for the worse. Pyongyang has publicly and privately said it would be willing to impose such a freeze in return for resuming the six-party talks.

Given that further international sanctions and isolation will not alter the North’s behavior or precipitate “regime change,” Republicans and Democrats interested in protecting U.S. and international security have an obligation to put election-year politics aside and support the administration’s efforts to restart the nuclear talks. More