Castro Says Soviet Changes, Gulf Crisis Threaten Cuba

HAVANA —  President Fidel Castro said that the Persian Gulf crisis and changes in the Soviet Union are hurting Cuba, and he appealed to Cubans to work harder and make sacrifices to save the island’s Communist system from economic collapse.

“It is impossible to foresee what the situation will be in 1991. . . . We might have to work with less and less and even with zero,” the gray-bearded, 64-year-old leader said in a three-hour speech Friday night to leaders of neighborhood block committees.

The speech marked the 30th anniversary of the so-called Committees for the Defense of the Revolution set up by Castro a year after he led the 1959 revolution and toppled right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Castro cited growing disruptions in vital oil and other raw materials exported to Cuba from the Soviet Union and Soviet plans to trade in convertible currency and at world market prices from 1991 onward.

These factors, together with soaring oil prices caused by the gulf crisis, have put a heavy squeeze on Cuba’s sugar-producing, oil-importing economy.

Castro said it is almost inevitable that Cuba will have to adopt an emergency austerity plan, known in the official economic jargon as “a special period in time of peace.”

Authorities have already started this by drastically restricting fuel distribution and extending rationing of food, clothes and other goods because of delays in Soviet shipments.

“The current limitations may become much more serious,” Castro said. “So what are we going to do? Give up the revolution, socialism, our independence? Never.”