http://www.presstv.ir/detail/152166.html
Press TV
November 23, 2010

In an article published on Tuesday, the former Cuban president called
the Western military alliance an “aggressive institution” that ignored
“billions of persons suffering from poverty, underdevelopment and food
shortages.”

Castro also dismissed plans unveiled by Western leaders in the Lisbon
summit last week to hand over security in Afghanistan to local forces
by 2014.

He said he believes that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) will be forced to “hand over power” to the Afghan resistance
“in defeat.”

Castro’s comments come only days after Afghan President Hamid Karzai
signed an agreement with NATO in the recent Lisbon conference,
ensuring the presence of US and NATO forces there even beyond 2014 – a
self-declared deadline for the end of NATO military operations in
Afghanistan.

US President Barack Obama has meanwhile said that American forces
will remain in Afghanistan even after other Western countries withdraw
their troops, by far backtracking on an earlier pledge of a major
drawdown from the war-torn country by July 2011.

“Obama already admitted that his promise to withdraw US soldiers from
Afghanistan may be postponed….After the Nobel Prize, we would have
to award him with the prize for ‘the best snake charmer’ that has ever
existed,” Castro said.

Led by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, the Western military
alliance started the Afghan war nine years ago under the pretext of
rooting out Taliban militants.

However, NATO has admitted that the militants have increased their
power in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

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KOMINFORM

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