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Dictatorship`s VP Criticizes Democratic Systems

This week Cuba`s Vice President, Carlos Lage Davila, told a meeting of Foreign Ministers representing the countries of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) at the United Nations that "our movement is essential to the quest for a new system of international relations. We do not align ourselves to wars, to terrorism, to injustice, to inequality, to double standards. We align ourselves to peace and to justice." The Cuban VP did not attempt to explain how keeping Cubans under a Communist dictatorship, jailing opposition figures, amounts to peace and justice.

"The concepts of limited sovereignty, humanitarian intervention, preventive war and regime change are fascist, they are not modern theories designed to defend freedom and combat terrorism. `Human safety` and `the responsibility to protect` are concepts which conceal the intention to encroach upon the sovereignty and do away with the independence of poor nations - never, of course, of powerful countries," Davila told the Non-Alignment Movement ministers, many of whom represent dictatorial countries or countries that limit the civil rights of their own citizens.

Saving his closing words to blast Cuba`s democratic neighbor to the north, the dictatorship`s vice president said when the Soviet Union and European socialist block collapsed, we were practically alone, determined to hold on to our flag and to socialism. The government of the United States stepped up the blockade with the passing of new laws, amendments and counter-amendments, it undertook new terrorist actions and unleashed an unprecedented international diplomatic and media campaign against the Cuban revolution."