June 26, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 10, 1428

HAVANA, June 25: Cuba's communist leader Fidel Castro accused US President George W. Bush of ordering him killed even before moving into the White House, in an article published in the newspaper Granma on Monday.

“The issue of the accusation related to his plan to kill me comes from before he used fraud to steal the victory from another candidate,” the convalescing Castro, 80, said of Bush.

Castro, who claims to hold a sort of world record in evading assassination plots, at some 650 in his count, recalled in an opinion piece in the Cuban Communist Party newspaper that he reported the alleged plot publicly on August 5, 2000 in a speech in Pinar del Rio.

Of all the US presidents since 1959, Castro said Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) ordered no hit, and that he had no knowledge of former president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) ever having given a green light for a Castro assassination bid.

Castro's recollections come a week after he insisted in an essay entitles “They will never have Cuba,” that Cuba would keep making and importing weaponry to stave off a US invasion.

Fidel Castro, who took power in Cuba in January 1959, is still on the mend from major intestinal surgery last year.

Castro turns 81 on Aug 13 and has not appeared in public since his July 26 operation for intestinal trouble. Castro's brother Raul Castro, 76, took the helm of the country last July 31.

Fidel Castro revealed on Monday however that he had been “between life and death” when he handed power to his brother Raul.—AFP