CUBA'S POSITION ON BEILGOQ-AMERICAN INTERVENTION IN THE CONGO
[The following is a translation of the text of the statement of the position of the Cuban government on the crisis in the Congo precipitated by Belgium, Great Britain and the United States, The . statement was issued over the signatures of Premier Fidel Castro Ruz and President Osvaldo Dorticés Torrado. |
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The governments of the United States and Belgium, by arranging the intervention of NATO troops and planes, implementing a para~ trooper attack on Stanleyville and supporting the mercenaries, have committed a new repugnant crime against the international laws governing the sovereignty of peoples. The excuse that this military action was motivated by humanitarian aims, the objective being to protect the lives of foreigners, is really cynical. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Laotians, Congolese and other nationalities have died and many others will lose their lives as a consequence of the colonial wars that North America is conducting against these peoples,
The ones responsible for the attack on Stanleyville, under cover of humanism,. are the same ones who murdered Lumumba and brought chaos and civil war to the Congo.
The only ‘losses among the residents of the Congo have been directly due to the armed attack carried out by the Belgian paratroopers transported by American planes and which occurred when negotiations were being conducted with ‘the aim of evacuating these residents.
This deed is the scandalous culmination of the increasingly aggressive policy and intervention of imperlalist forces directed by the North American government. The intervention in the Congo follows the intervention in Vietnam, the violation of the neutrality of Laos, the provocations and aggressions against Cambodia, the bombings of Democratic Vietnam and the violations of the air space of our country. All these actions have been conducted with absolute impunity.
The Revolutionary Government of Cuba, in conformity with its invariable international conduct, makes the following declaration:
(1) Condemns with indignation the criminal aggression in the Congo and affirms the militant solidarity .< of its * Reople with the Congolese people.
(2). Reiterates the declaration formulated at the time of the. Conference of the Nonaligned Countries, which proclaimed that peace-ful coexistence must not only refer to "relations between the big powers but also to relations between the big powers and small nations,
(3) Close unity among all the anti-imperialist forces, bring-
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ing moral. and material support to the people of-the Congo and to all nations that are victims of aggression, is indispensable,
(4) It is of imperious necessity to firmly stop the criminal acts’ of oppression of Yankee imperialism in order to prevent it from pursuing with impunity its policy of aggression and intervention against the countries of Asia, Africa, and the Americas* who feel these wounds in their own flesh,