June 2, 2002	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 20,1423

HOLGUIN (Cuba), June 1: Cuban President Fidel Castro on Saturday told some 400,000 Cubans at a rally here that despite calls for change from Washington, his government’s socialist path would continue unchanged.

The address was seen as a response to US President George W. Bush’s speeches of May 20, in which he called for democratic opening in Cuba.

In addresses in Washington and Miami, Bush vowed to uphold the 41-year-old US economic embargo on Cuba unless Havana holds elections.

Bush’s assertion that he would maintain trade sanctions on the island “multiplies the honor and glory of our people,” Castro said.

“Defy the rain,” Castro urged his spectators, who stood stoically under a downpour in this city some 700kms east of Havana.

Bush’s “Initiative for a New Cuba” speech was “a insult,” said Castro, calling on the US leader “to respect the intelligence of people capable of thinking”.

Bush spoke “like a bully or a thug,” Castro said.

The Cuban leader dedicated the majority of his speech to a gloomy depiction of Cuban society prior to the 1959 revolution.

“Socialism has created more property-owners in Cuba than capitalism did over centuries,” Castro said.

Vowing that not even a single Cuban cent would go to foreign wallets, Castro reassured his listeners that neither he nor any of his colleagues had personal accounts in foreign currencies in Cuba or elsewhere.—AFP