The Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams today called on rich countries to cancel Third World debt and criticized the US embargo against Cuba during his official visit to the Caribbean island.
"Let me say this clearly. It is wrong that the Third World should be crippled with debt while the First World is affluent," Mr Adams, invited to visit by the Communist Party of Cuba, said.
"The policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have locked South American and Caribbean nations into a vicious cycle of borrowing and repayment of loans and interest on loans that can never be paid," said Mr Adams.
"In a world of increasing wealth...it is wrong, it is outrageous, it is heartbreaking that each week 134,000 children die from starvation or avoidable diseases".
He also spoke out against the embargo imposed on Cuba by the United States more than four decades ago to isolate President Fidel Castro.
The Sinn Féin leader was expected to visit Cuba in September but postponed the trip following the terrorist attacks in the US. The cancellation was also linked to the arrest in Colombia in August of Mr Niall Connoly, Sinn Féin's representative in Havana, and suspected IRA members Mr Martin McCauley and Mr James Monaghan.
The men were held on suspicion of offering help to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist insurgency fighting the Colombian government. Mr Adams has refused to comment on the arrests during his trip.
AFP