Castro opens Cuba's own Olympic games
Anthony Boadle
Cuba inaugurated what it called its own Olympic games on Tuesday with a martial band and fireworks at a night-time rally attended by 30,000 people after it withdrew from a major regional competition citing security fears.
Some 1,500 athletes will compete in 337 events in 33 sports over the next fortnight in the "National Olympic Games" organized by President Fidel Castro's communist government after Cuba pulled out of the Central American and Caribbean games in El Salvador.
World javelin record-holder Osleidys Menendez carried the torch up to the monument of Cuban independence hero Jose Marti to light the flame and kick off the competition.
Castro said the Salvadorean authorities had been "accomplices" to terrorist attacks against Cuba and would not guarantee the safety of Cuban athletes.
"Today is a historic day that marks a new stage in Cuban sport. Forward gallant athletes," Castro, dressed in his trademark military fatigues and cap, said in a speech at the opening ceremony in Havana's Revolution Square.
"Long live socialism, long live the revolution. We shall overcome," he concluded.
Castro, in power since 1959, was accompanied by Nobel prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Colombia. Also attending the ceremony was Fausto Bertinotti, secretary general of Italy's Rifondazione Comunista Party.
Castro, 76, said organizing the nationwide games cost one third of the expense of sending a Cuban team of 1,000 athletes to compete in the Central American games.
Western diplomats in Havana said Cuba may have pulled out of the regional games because it could not afford to go.
Economically-battered Cuba has never fully recovered from the collapse of its sponsor the Soviet Union.
But Castro's government has maintained its focus on sport that has turned the Caribbean island of 11 million people into a sporting power that consistently outstrips other developing nations in world competitions.
The government announced a month ago that it would not compete in the games under way in El Salvador because anti-Castro exiled groups planned to kidnap Cuban athletes and assassinate their top Olympic official.
Cuba's sporting might has suffered from the defection of some of its top athletes in recent years. Last month the island's best baseball pitcher, Jose Ariel Contreras, defected at a competition in Mexico and is now in the United States.
Cuba and El Salvador have not had diplomatic relations for four decades and Havana accuses the Salvadorean government of allowing Florida-based opponents of Castro to use the Central American country as a launching pad for attacks against Cuba.
Two Salvadoreans are in jail in Cuba charged with planting a series of bombs in Havana hotels in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist.
