"The rich world should condone their foreign debt and

grant fresh soft credits to debtor nations

to finance development."

SPEECH BY HIS EXCELLENCY

 DR. FIDEL CASTRO RUZ,

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA,

 AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FINANCING

 FOR DEVELOPMENT, IN MONTERREY, MARCH 21, 2002,

"YEAR OF THE HEROES

IMPRISONED

 BY THE U.S. EMPIRE"

Excellencies:

Not everyone here will share my thoughts.

 Still, I will respectfully say what I think.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system

of plundering and exploitation like no other in history.

 Thus, the peoples believe less and less

in statements and promises.

The prestige of the international financial

 institutions rates less than zero.

The world economy is today a huge casino.

Recent analyses indicate that for every dollar

that goes into trade, over one hundred end up in speculative

operations completely disconnected from the real economy.

As a result of this economic order,

over 75 percent of the world population

lives in underdevelopment, and extreme poverty

has already reached 1.2 billion people in the Third World.

 So, far from narrowing, the gap is widening.

The revenue of the richest nations that in 1960

was 37 times larger than that of the poorest is now 74 times larger.

The situation has reached such extremes

that the assets of the three wealthiest persons in the world

amount to the GDP of the 48 poorest countries combined.

Number of people actually starving was 826 million in the year 2001.

There are at the moment 854 million illiterate adults

while 325 million children do not attend school.

There are 2 billion people who have no access to low cost medications

 and 2.4 billion lack the basic sanitation conditions.

 No less than 11 million children under the age of 5 perish every year

from preventable causes while half a million go blind for lack of vitamin A.

>

The life span of the population in the developed world is 30 years

 higher than that of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa.

 A true genocide!

The poor countries should not be blamed for this tragedy.

They neither conquered nor plundered

entire continents for centuries;

they did not establish colonialism,

or re-establish slavery;

and, modern imperialism

is not of their making.

 Actually, they have been its victims.

Therefore, the main responsibility for financing

 their development lies with those states that,

for obvious historical reasons,

 enjoy today the benefits of those atrocities.

The rich world should condone their foreign debt

 and grant fresh soft credits to debtor nations

to finance their development.

The traditional offers of assistance, always scant

and often ridiculous, are either inadequate or unfulfilled.

>

For a true and sustainable economic

 and social development to take place,

much more is required than is usually admitted.

Measures as those suggested by the late James Tobin

to curtail the irrepressible flow of currency speculation

-albeit it was not his idea to foster development -

would perhaps be the only ones capable

of generating enough funds, which in the hands

of the UN agencies and not of awful institutions like the IMF,

 could supply direct development assistance

with a democratic participation of all countries

and without the need to sacrifice the

independence and sovereignty

of the peoples.

>

The Consensus draft, which the masters of the world

are imposing on this conference, intends that we accept

humiliating, conditioned and interfering alms.

>

Everything created since Bretton Woods

 until today should be reconsidered.

A farsighted vision was then missing,

thus, the privileges and interests of

the most powerful prevailed.

 In the face of the deep present crisis,

 a still worse future is offered where

 the economic, social and ecologic tragedy

of an increasingly ungovernable world

would never be resolved and

where the number of the poor

and the starving would grow higher,

 as if a large part of humanity were doomed.

>

It is high time for statesmen and politicians

to calmly reflect on this.

 The belief that a social & economic order

that has proven to be unsustainable

can be forcibly imposed is really senseless.

>

As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons

 piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest

can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry,

 but they cannot kill ignorance,

illnesses, poverty or hunger.

>

It should definitively be said:

 "Farewell to arms."

Something must be done to save humanity!

>

A better world is possible!

Thank you.

By Fidel Castro