Castro Felt Betrayed By Khrushchev, Plans To Tell All On Missile Crisis -- Cuban Leader To Speak This Week

WASHINGTON - Cuban President Fidel Castro plans to deliver this week for the first time a detailed account of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, including the betrayal he felt when Soviet leaders ignored him at the episode's decisive moment.

Castro will make his presentation Thursday in Havana before a gathering of prominent Soviet, U.S. and Cuban officials who took part in the event that gave the world perhaps its closest brush with a nuclear confrontation.

Cuban officials described Castro's plans to U.S. representatives involved in organizing the conference.

In recognition of the intimate ties that developed between Moscow and Havana for more than two decades after the crisis, Castro has generally muted his feelings about the bystander role that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev forced on him at the time.

But with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Castro no longer feels constrained to pull any punches, said Philip Brenner, an American University professor who will take part in this week's discussions.

"Castro is extraordinarily angry at the betrayal at the time of the missile crisis," Brenner said in a recent interview.

Castro was outraged when Khrushchev in October 1962 agreed without consulting him to dismantle Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba in return for President Kennedy's promise not to invade the Caribbean island.

Participants in the conference also have been told that Castro will discuss his decision, made under extreme U.S. pressure, to withdraw Soviet-supplied bombers from the island three weeks after the crisis ended.