CASTRO DECLARES WAR ON DRUGS

CIENFUEGOS, Cuba (AP) -- President Fidel Castro declared war on drug
traffickers during his annual Revolution Day speech Monday night, rejecting
charges that his government engages in the practice and promising
prosecution for those who do.

"They will be tried in Cuba, without a single exception," Castro promised.

A recent toughening of Cuba's penal code sets aside capital punishment not
only for military officers but also for top ranking civilian members of the
communist government found guilty of drug trafficking.

Speaking in the open plaza in this coastal city, Castro rejected persistent
rumors and charges from what he called the "counterrevolutionary mafia of
Miami" that he and his government aid traffickers who use the Caribbean island.

He called on the United States to join Cuba in a pact to work together to
fight the crime, scolding the American government for not doing so already.

Earlier in the speech, Castro included Canada in his traditional attack on
the United States during the annual July 26 address, accusing both countries
of dirty tricks aimed at harming Cuba during the Pan American Games in Winnipeg.

"We have never seen so many tricks, so much filth in the Pan American
Games," Castro told tens of thousands of Communist Party faithful and other
guests marking the start of the revolution that brought him to power four
decades ago.

Castro criticized calls by the local media in Canada for Cuban athletes to
defect and "hostile" treatment of the Cuban delegation. He also criticized
changes in the rules of competition for baseball, "the most important, the
most attractive sport."

"We are competing in enemy territory," Castro said of Canada.

Relations between Cuba and Canada were long friendly but have soured
recently as Canada has increasingly taken the communist country to task for
its human rights record. A key issue has been Canada's opposition to the
sentencing of four government opponents convicted of inciting sedition
through words and documents.

In the audience were 150 members of the Venceremos Brigade, a group of
Americans who come to Cuba annually to perform field work or other tasks in
support of the communist government.

"When I heard his helicopter land, I almost began crying," said Teresa
Calderon, 66, a Colombian-born American resident living in New York. When
Castro strode in front of the stage in his olive green uniform, she
clambered up on a white plastic chair and cried out like a teen-ager at a
rock concert.

"He is a hero for the Americas," she exclaimed.

The yearly ceremony marks the disastrous July 26, 1953, attack by the Castro
brothers and their followers on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago. The
attack launched the revolution against the dictatorship of then-President
Fulgencio Batista.

Although the attackers were all either killed or jailed, the movement later
regained strength and triumphed on New Year's Day 1959 after Batista fled
the country.

The site of the central speech varies every year and is chosen from among
provincial capitals based on their economic performance.

This year, Cienfuegos shares the honor with the central province of
Matanzas, where a second Revolution Day speech will be held Aug. 2 on Cuba's
northern coast.

Cienfuegos, a city of 125,000, is one of Cuba's major industrial centers,
boasting one of the world's largest sugar exporting facilities, an oil
refinery, a paper mill, a cement plant, a thermal power plant and much of
Cuba's shrimp fleet.