LA PAZ, Bolivia -- On the eve of his execution in Bolivia three decades ago, Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara said he felt betrayed by his colleague-in-revolution Fidel Castro, according to a retired Bolivian officer.

Guevara, who fought alongside Castro in the Cuban revolution in the late 1950s and later fomented rebellion in Bolivia, also said he favored starting a rebel front in Peru but traveled to Bolivia on Castro's insistence.

While this is not the first time retired air force Gen. Nino de Guzman has discussed Guevara publicly, he has never before talked about his final moments with the doctor-turned-guerrilla leader. The new revelations, which emerged in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, include conversations between the two and an exchange of gifts.

Guevara is revered as a revolutionary hero in Cuba and he remains a mythic figure across Latin America, where his bearded likeness can be found on everything from T-shirts to truck mudguards.

Nino de Guzman met Guevara on Oct. 9, 1967, after the guerrilla leader had been injured and captured by Bolivian army troops. As a helicopter pilot, the now-retired officer was sent to the village where Guevara and other guerrilla survivors were being held.

After Guevara was executed, by Bolivian army soldiers on orders from the military high command, Nino de Guzman took his body by helicopter to Vallegrande, where it was buried near the airstrip.

``I was probably the last person to talk at length with Che before he was executed,'' Nino de Guzman told the AP.

He said he met Guevara in a small room, surrounded by several Bolivian soldiers, and that he struck up a conversation after lighting Guevara's pipe.

``Fidel betrayed me,'' Nino de Guzman says Guevara repeated several times. Guevara did not elaborate on the statement, he said.

During their meeting, he gave Guevara some tobacco, and the wounded guerrilla took a brown-covered, hand-written booklet out of his boot and handed it to Nino de Guzman. When Guevara's skeleton was recovered last year in Vallegrande, pieces of the tobacco were found in his jacket pocket.

The booklet was Guevara's first proclamation to Latin Americans and Bolivians, and on Thursday, Nino de Guzman disclosed its existence for the first time. He said he hadn't wanted to release the booklet until now.

``We make our voices heard for the first time,'' Guevara wrote in the booklet. ``We have to reach all the corners of this continent with the echo of our cry for rebellion. We rise today having exhausted all possibilities of a peaceful fight to show through our example the road to follow.''