Havana, June 15 (AIN) Fidel Castro's denunciation of the current unjust economic order, read at the Group of 77 South Summit in Qatar, has received widespread media coverage.

The Spanish Internet web site Terra España reported that the Cuban leader blasted the hypocrisy of how the wealthy nations talk about free trade, in a letter read by Vice-president Carlos Lage.

The page noted that Fidel Castro excused himself from the Summit citing pressing matters including, "US government efforts to grant safe haven to a notorious and confessed terrorist [Luis Posada Carriles], a fugitive from Venezuelan justice who is responsible, among many atrocious acts of terror, for the midair bombing of a Cuban commercial aircraft and the resulting death of 73 innocent people."

The German news agency DPA indicated that in a message to the summit sent by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, he stressed that the development objectives of the United Nations can only be reached if industrialized countries reduce their expenditures on energy and armaments.

In his message, the Caribbean leader pointed out the need to eliminate agricultural tariffs and subsidies which constitute an obstacle to exports by Third World countries. 

Likewise, the Spanish news agency EFE referred to the accusation made by the Cuban leader of an "economic order imposed upon the world by the process of neo-liberal globalization," in which, he said, "the world's poorest nations pay with tens of millions of lives." 

"Never before has there been so much inequality and never before has inequality been so great," Fidel affirmed, according to EFE reports. The second South Summit began its meetings today in Doha, Qatar. The event brings together heads of state of the Group of 77, in which 132 under-developed countries and China are participating.

(AIN) June 15 2005