Pubdate: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 Source: Reuters Copyright: 1999 Reuters Limited. Author: Nelson Acosta CASTRO OPPOSES U.S. INTERVENTION IN COLOMBIA HAVANA - n President Fidel Castro, in a speech lasting into the early hours of Thursday, said any U.S. military intervention in conflict-torn Colombia would be ``a colossal disaster'' for the world. ``I think it would be a great madness for the United States to carry out a military intervention there, a massive, incredible mistake,'' Castro said at the close of an anti-capitalist youth conference in Havana. ``The United States would be wrapped up in a huge conflict ... the heat and the mosquitoes of that enormous Colombian jungle would be enough to defeat an invading army,'' he added, drawing applause from his 2,000-strong audience. Some analysts have raised the possibility of U.S.-led military intervention in Colombia to try to halt a long-running guerrilla war that is taking a heavy toll in lives and damage to the South American nation's economy. Washington has denied it is mulling such a plan. The Cuban leader was speaking to delegates from 63 countries at an international youth meeting in Havana against ''neoliberalism'' or capitalist economic theory. In an initial speech of nearly three hours, followed by an hour-long question-and-answer session, Castro reiterated familiar ideas about the collapse of capitalism and the resurgence of international human solidarity. Dressed in his trademark olive-green military fatigues, the 73-year-old Castro recalled his days as a student radical reading about the French Revolution prior to launching his own rebellion against former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. In power since 1959, Castro pledged to remain ``loyal until death'' to Marxist-Leninist theory ``because it is the creative doctrine which teaches man to think and to create.'' And he predicted that ``ghosts'' of resistance would rise up in the 21st century to halt the march of capitalist forces -- ''those backward ideas, those exploitative systems, those stupid and ridiculous pretensions.'' - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea