Castro Urges Quest for End to Threat of War in Mideast

HAVANA —  Cuban President Fidel Castro on Monday urged the world to seek a peaceful solution to the Persian Gulf crisis, saying that war there would leave a legacy of hunger in poor countries that would kill millions.

In a speech in Havana opening a U.N. Congress on Crime Prevention, Castro said war between Iraq and the West would destroy “incalculable” lives and resources.

In addition, by driving up oil prices to more than double their previous value, such a conflict would have a fatal impact on oil-importing Third World countries already burdened by unpayable foreign debts and hamstrung by an unequal world trading system, he said.

“The duty of the international community to find a nonviolent solution to the conflict has to do not just with the sacred principle of peace but also with the lives of tens of millions of human beings who could die as a result of hunger,” the Cuban leader said.

In an apparent criticism of both Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the response of the United States and its allies in sending military forces to the gulf, Castro condemned what he called “manifestations of arbitrary behavior and criminal violence in international conduct.”