FIDEL CASTRO DECLARES WAR ON CUBA'S RISING CRIME

HAVANA, Jan 7 (Reuters) - President Fidel
Castro, who has kept a tight rein on Cuba's isolated society during 40
years in power, has vowed to get tough on rising crime on the island,
particularly prostitution, drugs and human smuggling.

But in a marathon speech, broadcast into early Thursday, Castro pinned
most blame for the recent crime surge on foreign influences associated
with Cuba's opening to tourism and business from abroad this decade.

"Crime is one of the factors that have grown in these times, as new
forms of delinquency have arisen that we are not accustomed to,"
Castro told a 5,000- strong audience at a ceremony for the 40th
anniversary of his Revolutionary National Police force in Havana's
Karl Marx theatre.

"The fundamental task, of enormous economic and political importance,
is to combat and defeat crime," added a stern-looking Castro, dressed
in military uniform, to applause.

The communist leader's five-hour speech -- given on Tuesday behind
closed doors but broadcast on state-run television from Wednesday
night -- was Castro's first detailed public analysis of a crime
phenomenon that has shocked Cubans this year.

Although still at relatively low levels compared with other Latin
American and Caribbean nations, the crime rise -- including murder,
rape and robbery -- has startled a society that has been
tightly-controlled since Castro's 1959 revolution.

Leaders of the ruling Communist Party have been railing against crime
all year, while the Roman Catholic Church has called for a renewal of
moral values in Cuban society.

On the streets, authorities have responded with a crackdown -- putting
more police on the streets, rounding up prostitutes, pimps and
hustlers, closing discotheques, and forming neighbourhood vigilante
groups known as "Popular Detachments of Revolutionary Vigilance."

Castro, 72, acknowledged the "growing tendency" of prostitution in
Cuba.

He said 6,714 prostitutes were rounded up in Havana in the first 11
months of 1998. Some 190 pimps were also caught, of whom 56 percent
were jailed and the rest fined, he said, adding: "That seems a lot of
fines ... stronger measures are needed."

Castro and his government are proud of cleaning up Cuba in the years
after the revolution and are clearly stung by perceptions the
situation is again getting out of hand. Before the revolution, Cuba
was sometimes disparagingly referred to as "the bordello of the
Caribbean," famed for its women and casinos.

While largely wiped out in the intervening decades, prostitution and
other problems reemerged in the 1990s as Cuba opened up once more to
foreign tourists and its superpower ally, the Soviet Union, collapsed,
leaving islanders increasingly desperate for ways to make money.

Castro also acknowledged that Cuba was increasingly being used as a
transit point for regional drug-traffickers, leading to a nascent
internal market. "It's hurtful, isn't it? It hurts me a lot," he said.

The Cuban leader said 216 foreigners had been arrested on drug crimes
in the last three years, of whom 165 were still in jail. The number
of drug hauls in the first 11 months of 1998 was 269 -- nearly double
the previous year -- with total seizures of 3.52 tonnes of marijuana,
cocaine and hashish, he added.

Drugs were a "mortal venom for our youth and our people," Castro said,
adding the problem had been been fuelled by the availability of
dollars since the 1993 legalisation of possession of the U.S. currency
for Cubans.

Castro also condemned the "repugnant" crime of human smuggling via
speedboats, which over the last year has become the chief method for
Cubans this year fleeing the island illegally for the United States.
But he said vigilance was increasing and in the first 11 months of
1998, authorities blocked 90 such planned smuggling attempts,
involving 660 people.