-DATE- 19851223 -YEAR- 1985 -DOCUMENT_TYPE- INTERVIEW -AUTHOR- F. CASTRO -HEADLINE- CASTRO ON DEBT, U.S. INVASION, OTHER ISSUES -PLACE- BRAZIL -SOURCE- PRENSA LATINA -REPORT_NBR- FBIS -REPORT_DATE- 19851224 -TEXT- CASTRO ON DEBT, U.S. INVASION, OTHER ISSUES PA241921 Havana PRENSA LATINA in Spanish 0401 GMT 24 Dec 85 -- FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY [Text] Rio de Janeiro, 23 Dec (PL) -- According to President Fidel Castro, the advance of democracy, economic development, and Latin America's integration will not be possible unless Brazil succeeds. In an interview granted to Brazil's Manchete Television Network, which yesterday broadcast the first photos and statements it has shown of the Cuban leader in 27 years, Castro said one cannot think about development so long as unequal exchanges, protectionism, and the overvaluation of the dollar persist. The Cuban chief of state explained Cuba's political, economic, and social activities, as well as its electorial system. He also discussed the U.S. aggressions against Cuba and other subjects like religion and the alleged exporting of revolution. Regarding the foreign debt, he warned that the attempt to pay Latin America's $360 billion debt will ruin the area governments and cause an outbreak of serious social disruptions. He said that even if the foreign debt were to disappear or be paid off -- and this is an impossible hypothesis -- the Third World peoples would never be able to develop without a new international economic order. I have a very deep-seated idea about this problem. I respect the views of others, but I am absolutely convinced that the debt neither should nor can be paid because the inability to pay constitutes a legal argument, he went on. He added that there are mathematical, economic, historical, moral, and political reasons for not paying the debt, noting that in order to pay it, it would be necessary to impose such unfair conditions on peoples that the governments would be discredited and this would contribute to the social instability. There are juridical problems, he stressed, because the debt was not discussed with the people, with the parliaments. It is a debt contracted by the executive branches, by the economy ministers, without the participation of either the peoples or the parliaments that represent them. It is also economically impossible to pay. Any estimate or premise used proves that the Third World has no change of paying, and one must start with the premise that there is not, nor will there be in the future, any change of paying as long as the current international economic order is maintained. He added that from a moral standpoint, it must be said that "that money was squandered, wasted, robbed, or taken out of the country, and now they want the people to pay it." Castro maintained that the insistence on paying the debt will ruin the Latin American countries and will create such a grave recession that in the end it will destroy the recently-established democratic regimes. He criticized the Baker Plan, which seeks to reloan $20 billion to the 15 most indebted countries, obtaining this money from the surplus collected from interest rates. "The plan resolves nothing and makes the debt eternal. It also has all the IMF vices," the Cuban president said. On another subject, he denied that Cuba exports revolutions, noting that that accusation does not bear the slightest analysis. It was U.S. colonialism and neocolonialism which created the objective causes of the revolutions in Latin America, he stressed. Commenting on the risks of a possible U.S. invasion of Cuba, Castro said his country is in a position to mobilize millions of men and women for its defense. "Should it want to invade Cuba, the United States would have to employ 5 million soldiers in order to have a minimal two-to-one ratio," he said, adding that the Americans know that their technology would be useless in a people's war without either a front or a rearguard, and this would result in thousands of casualties. Castro later gave clear and summarized explanations about Cuba's socialist system and forms of land property -- privately owned or held in state-run cooperatives -- and he defended the system of popular democracy that currently prevails in the island. He mentioned the advances in the area of education and public health; and the elimination of unemployment, mendicancy, gambling, and illiteracy as achievements of his government, along with the existence of a social security system that leaves neither the elderly nor the disabled unprotected. The Cuban president praised the Vatican II Council and, without mentioning it, the theology of liberation, which defends the Church's position on behalf of the poor. Finally Castro wished success to Brazilian President Jose Sarney because, he said, his success will be that of democratic openings and will contribute to Latin America's progress. -END-