World Notes CUBA

Fidel Castro has never been known for his brevity, but the Cuban leader was in full rhetorical flood last week when he gave the editor of the French Communist Party daily L'Humanite a seven-hour interview that did not end until 4:30 a.m. Castro defended his recent closing of free farmers' markets, calling their operators "thieves" who were hurting the business of state-run cooperatives. He ridiculed the welcome given to Cuban dissidents in France and other Western countries by suggesting they were less eager to receive ordinary immigrants. "If the U.S. wants to welcome 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 people, we will not oppose it." And he labeled "ridiculous" a recent claim by Vernon Walters, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, that Cuba holds 15,000 political prisoners. "The truth: several hundred counterrevolutionary detainees." None of these prisoners, Castro asserted, are physically abused, "not even the North American spies."