ADDRESS OF COMMANDER IN CHIEF FIDEL CASTRO RUZ, FIRST SECRETARY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CUBA AND PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL OF STATES AND MINISTERS TO THE VII SUMMIT CONFERENCE OF THE NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT AT THE PALACE OF CULTURE IN NEW DELHI, INDIA, ON MARCH 13TH 1983, “YEAR OF THE XXX ANNIVERSARY OF MONCADA” (NON-OFFICIAL TRANSLATION)
Esteemed First Minister Indira Gandhi; Distinguished Heads of State or Government;
Distinguished guests In the morning of September 9 th, 1979, in the closing of the VI Summit in Havana, after interesting hours of work together with the Heads of State or Government that integrate the Movement, and after long and not always serene discussions that at some points seemed to threaten our cohesion, I finished my closing speech with these convinced words: “We can proclaim that our Movement is more united than ever, that our Movement is stronger than ever, that our Movement is more independent than ever, that our Movement is more ours than ever” Today, on transferring, after more than three years of exercise, the Presidency of the Movement of Non- Aligned Countries, to our admired Indira Gandhi and to India, country she is historically entitled to represent, we can assert, as a testimony of our accomplished duty, that we hold a Movement whose integrity was not weakened, whose vitally has increased, whose independence has been kept saved from all the attacks that intended to harm it. A Movement that fully belongs to a community of countries that, for 22 years of united effort have integrated it as an instrument of peace, national liberation and economic development. It has not been, as we all know, an easy endeavor. Never before the Movement had been our Movement submitted to such external pressure, nor there had existed before the serious internal problems that lately threatened to weakened our unity. During the very VI Summit, the contradictory interpretation of the deeds in Kampuchea, prevented unanimity. The fairness of the consensus reached at that time agreeing the seat corresponding to that country to be empty, was not accepted as legitimate by all the countries members. It has taken there years and in a less polemic environment, to ratify that consensus, so that the decision then stated by Cuba, from the Presidency of the Political Commission were completely vindicated as fair. (Applauses)