Nato is 'mafia' and Obama a 'snake charmer'

Nato is a "military mafia," the war in Afghanistan is "genocidal" and US President Barack Obama deserves the prize for the "best snake charmer" who ever lived, Cuba's Fidel Castro said Monday.

In an article published in response to the Western alliance's weekend summit in Portugal, the former Cuban leader called Nato an "aggressive institution" that ignored "billions of persons suffering from poverty, underdevelopment, shortages of food, housing, health, education and jobs."

Castro, 84, communism's most visible living figure, led Cuba from the 1959 Revolution until he stepped down for health reasons in 2006, handing over the presidency to his brother Raul.

Castro called Nato (short for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) "a bird of prey sitting in the lap of the Yankee empire," that was used by the United States to wage "the genocidal Afghanistan war."

He brushed off ambitious plans unveiled at the Lisbon summit that would have Western leaders press Kabul to take over security by 2014, predicting they would eventually "hand over power to the Afghan resistance, in defeat."

The United States is "going through a difficult phase as the result of its war exploits" and using its "enormous media resources to maintain, dupe and confuse world public opinion," Castro said.

"Obama already admitted that his promise to withdraw US soldiers from Afghanistan may be postponed... After the Nobel Prize, we would have to award him with the prize for 'the best snake charmer' that has ever existed."