From Havana to Harlem: Cuban minister says island needs support from African-American leaders

Cuban minister recalls NY Malcolm X-Castro meeting

NEW YORK — Fifty years after Malcolm X met with Fidel Castro in New York in the midst of the Cold War the Cuban people still rely on the support of African-Americans, Cuba’s foreign minister said.

Bruno Rodriguez spoke Sunday at an event commemorating the black civil rights leader’s September 1960 encounter with Castro in Harlem, New York’s most celebrated black neighborhood.

Rodriguez said the first communist Cuban delegation to the United Nations received support from Malcolm X and other black leaders and forged a lasting bond between “Cuban revolutionaries and the African-American progressive people.”

Rodriguez said that while the Cold War is long over, the threat of nuclear war still looms if Iran is attacked over its nuclear program. The U.S. accuses Iran of hiding plans to build a nuclear bomb; Iran denies that and says it’s working only toward building nuclear power plants.

“Today the same firm voice of our historical leader is in front of an international call for peace, and cautioning about the risk that a military attack against Iran would have for the world, putting it on the brink of a nuclear war,” Rodriguez said to a cheering crowd.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told The Associated Press on Sunday that international nuclear regulators had never found proof that Iran is pursuing an atomic bomb.

A panel of Cuban supporters asked for help freeing five Cubans imprisoned for espionage in the United States. They also remembered the legacy of the Rev. Lucius Walker, who directed a program to send Americans to study medicine in Cuba.