In Cuba there are numerous and different mass, trade union, farmers, women, students, writers, artists and social organizations, which are represented at the Council of State, as well as non-governmental organizations, many of them represented by deputies in this Assembly, that will be offended if they are mistaken for a few hundred individuals who receive money, instructions and a oxygen from abroad.
In the multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, we will continue to advocate for peace, International Law and all other just causes, and we will continue to denounce the threats to the survival of the human species posed by climate change and the existence of nuclear arsenals.
We will continue to promote the exercise of human rights, including the economic, social and cultural rights, by all persons, as well as the right of all peoples to peace and development.
The Cuban Revolution is deeply grateful to the peoples, parties and governments from which it has received an unwavering and permanent solidarity, and shall continue to orient its foreign policy based on our unshakable allegiance to principles.
A symbol of the above are the special relations that we maintain with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, to which we will continue to offer our support, in the face of the attempts to destabilize the legitimate government headed by Comrade President Nicolas Maduro Moros. We reject every attempt to impose sanctions against that sister nation (APPLAUSE).
As I said a few days ago, we are willing to cooperate with the United States at the multilateral and bilateral levels, as well as in the event of any dangerous situation that may require collective and effective humanitarian responses that should never be politicized.
Such is the case of the combat against the Ebola virus in West Africa and its prevention in the Americas, as was proclaimed by the ALBA Special Summit held in Havana on this issue last October.
Just as I have stated in the recently held CARICOM and ALBA Summits, I appreciate the invitation conveyed to me by the President of Panama, Juan Carlos Valera, to attend the Seventh Summit of the Americas and I confirm I will attend in order to explain our positions in an honest and respectful way to all Heads of State and Government without any exception.
Cuba's attendance at that Summit is the result of the solid and unanimous consensus achieved within Latin America and the Caribbean, a region that is living through a new era and has united, amidst its diversity, under the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) which Cuba was honored to preside last year.
We do not forget that ALBA, with its continued appeal to and support of all countries of the region, managed to remove the opprobrious sanctions imposed against Cuba back in 1962 by the Organization of American States, at a meeting held in the Republic of Honduras, where hardly one month later a coup d'etat was perpetrated that ousted Comrade Zelaya, the president of that country.
Comrades all:
Within just a few days we will be celebrating the upcoming New Year and the fifty sixth anniversary of the Triumph of the Revolution. Only two days ago, on December 18, we marked the fifty eighth anniversary of the occasion when we reunited with Fidel at a place called Palmas de Vicana, in the Sierra Maestra mountains, in the heart of the Sierra Maestra, and Fidel's historical exclamation when he knew that, in total, we had seven rifles to resume the struggle: Now we will for sure win the war!
The unshakable faith in victory that Fidel instilled in all of us shall continue to lead our people in the defense and further improvement of the work of its Revolution.
Happy New Year!
We salute the new fifty-seventh year of the Cuban Revolution!
Raul Castro is president of Cuba.
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