Bush Sees Fall of Castro, Rise of Democracy

CHICAGO —  President Bush said Friday that Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s power is crumbling, and he predicted that the Communist-ruled country soon will become a democracy.

Bush, speaking on the same day that a top Soviet official arrived in Havana for talks on the proposed withdrawal of Soviet troops from Cuba, said that the last Communist regime in the Western Hemisphere will fall.

The President said that the entire hemisphere is on the verge of enjoying the benefits of free trade.

“One more event will demonstrate to one and all that we really have entered into a new era of freedom and opportunity,” Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce convention. “I’m speaking of Cuba’s becoming free and democratic. Today, we hear the creaking and crumbling of Castro’s dictatorship.

“The day is coming, sooner than Castro dares to believe, when the people of Cuba will reclaim their destiny and rejoin the Western Hemisphere’s family of free nations,” Bush said.

In Havana, a Soviet Embassy spokesman said that Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Nikolayenko arrived in Cuba and will be holding “working consultations” over the next few days.

The Soviet Foreign Ministry had said earlier that the talks would include consultations on negotiations proposed by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev last week for the pullout of Soviet troops from the island country.

The United States has long imposed economic sanctions against Cuba, which is 90 miles from the U.S. mainland, because of its ties to communism.