HAVANA, March 25 (Reuters) - Cuba on Thursday condemned the NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia as an unjustified and criminal act of aggression which threatened world peace and further strengthened U.S. military hegemony.
``The ridiculous notion of imposing solutions by force is incompatible with all civilised reasoning and the essential principles of international law,'' a Foreign Ministry statement said.
Havana blamed its political arch-foe, the United States, as ``the main instigator of the aggression'' and urged a peaceful, negotiated solution to the Balkan conflict which respected the sovereignty and will of the region's peoples.
``The war launched by NATO revives humanity's just fears of the creation of an insulting unipolarity, ruled by a warlike empire, which has set itself up as a world policeman, and is capable of dragging its military and political allies into the rashest of actions,'' the ministry statement said.
The government of President Fidel Castro warned that ``this new crime'' of attacking Serbian targets could provoke an escalation of violence with consequences for the rest of Europe and the world.
And the statement said Cuba regretted the suffering of the Yugoslav peoples, ``who were the ones that fought most heroically in Europe against the Nazi hordes during World War II.''
14:40 03-25-99
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