PARIS -- Cuba's Fidel Castro urged Nikita Khrushchev to use the atom bomb against the United States if Washington invaded Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis, but the Soviet leader rebuffed the suggestion, letters written by the Cuban leader reveal.
'I am telling you this,' Castro wrote to Khrushchev on Oct. 26, 1962, 'because I believe that the agressiveness of the imperialists is becoming extremely dangerous and if they come to a brutal act such as invading Cuba, it will be the moment to eliminate forever such a danger.
'It would be an act of the most legitimate self-defense, brutal and terrible as the solution may be, because there would be no other,' Castro said.
The letter, which is to be published in a book about Castro by French writer Jean-Edern Hallier, appeared in Friday's editions of the Paris daily Le Monde.
Khrushchev, however, rejected Castro's suggestion, saying that such a step would start a thermonuclear war.
'You have proposed to us that we be the first to strike a nuclear blow against enemy territory,' the Soviet leader wrote.
'Of course, you understand where that would lead us. It would not be a simple blow but the start of a world thermonuclear war. Dear Camarade Fidel Castro, I find your proposal incorrect, even though I understand the reasons for it.'
Le Monde writes that in allowing the letters to be published, Castro may be responding to Khrushchev, who in his memoirs accused the Cuban leader of having acted irresponsibly in recommending use of the atomic bomb against the United States.
