CASTRO OPPOSES U.S. INTERVENTION IN COLOMBIA

HAVANA - n President Fidel Castro, in a speech lasting
into the early hours of Thursday, said any U.S. military intervention
in conflict-torn Colombia would be ``a colossal disaster'' for the
world.

``I think it would be a great madness for the United States to carry
out a military intervention there, a massive, incredible mistake,''
Castro said at the close of an anti-capitalist youth conference in
Havana.

``The United States would be wrapped up in a huge conflict ... the
heat and the mosquitoes of that enormous Colombian jungle would be
enough to defeat an invading army,'' he added, drawing applause from
his 2,000-strong audience.

Some analysts have raised the possibility of U.S.-led military
intervention in Colombia to try to halt a long-running guerrilla war
that is taking a heavy toll in lives and damage to the South American
nation's economy.

Washington has denied it is mulling such a plan.

The Cuban leader was speaking to delegates from 63 countries at an
international youth meeting in Havana against ''neoliberalism'' or
capitalist economic theory.

In an initial speech of nearly three hours, followed by an hour-long
question-and-answer session, Castro reiterated familiar ideas about
the collapse of capitalism and the resurgence of international human
solidarity.

Dressed in his trademark olive-green military fatigues, the
73-year-old Castro recalled his days as a student radical reading
about the French Revolution prior to launching his own rebellion
against former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.

In power since 1959, Castro pledged to remain ``loyal until death'' to
Marxist-Leninist theory ``because it is the creative doctrine which
teaches man to think and to create.''

And he predicted that ``ghosts'' of resistance would rise up in the
21st century to halt the march of capitalist forces -- ''those
backward ideas, those exploitative systems, those stupid and
ridiculous pretensions.''