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Saturday, November 18, 2006

November 18, 1960: Soviet Union Urges Cuba to Stop 'Rattling Soviet Rockets' at US; Che Guevara Courts Peiping

The Soviet Union has "told the Cubans to quite rattling Soviet rockets against the United States and has warned them that Moscow's relations with Washington, especially with the new Administration of President-elect John F. Kennedy, counted for more in the Kremlin than the Cuban problem as such," New York Times reporter Max Frankel wrote in a story prepared for publication tomorrow. "There are indications that this advice has not been entirely ignored. ...

"On Nov. 8, as the election returns were being tallied in the United States, Premier Castro told the Cuban people that they must defend themselves and not go to sleep with the comfortable knowledge that Soviet rockets would rain upon the United States following any attack on Cuba," the Times reported. ...

"A number of prominent officials in the Castro Government and in the Communist party here [Havana] are known to prefer the more strongly anti-United States and more boldly revolutionary doctrines of the Communist Chinese to Moscow's version of 'peaceful coexistence.' Major Enersto Guevara [director of Cuba's National Bank] is frequently counted among these," Frankel wrote. Guevara is currently in China seeking aid and is also visiting Moscow.

Also today the State Department said the Castro government had received at least 28,000 tons of Soviet arms since January 1959. They include 45,000 Czech automatic rifles, sixty anti-tank guns and eight MIG jet fighters. Castro "has created and armed a military force ten times the size of that of ex-President Fulgencio Batista and far larger than any army in Latin America," the State Department said.

In Peiping Premier Chou-En-lai criticized the United States decision to move Naval ships into place to protect Guatemala and Nicaragua as "brazen." He also said the United States was attempting to "threaten Cuba further by force of arms." Meanwhile, Guatemala and Nicaragua considered invoking the Rio treaty, which allows them to ask members of the Organization of American States to come to their defense, in response to security threats from Cuba.

In Laos, the neutralist government has reportedly decided to form a coalition Cabinet that will include the pro-Communist party.

In the Congo the Army regime threatened force to halt a UN conciliation commission from visiting the country. The regime also broke relations with Ghana.

The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke said he would retire in August, when his term expires.