Cuba defends one-party rule

HAVANA - A new draft Communist Party platform published yesterday defends the one-party system and is critical of the United …

HAVANA - A new draft Communist Party platform published yesterday defends the one-party system and is critical of the United States for proposing massive aid for a post-Castro Cuba.

"In the memory of the Cuban people," the party platform says, "a multiparty system is correctly associated with cheap politicking, injustices, abuse, demagogic promises which always go unkept, fraud, corruption and the sullying of politics."

Meanwhile six dissidents are under arrest and another has been convicted and jailed in the biggest roundup of Cuban opposition members this year for alleged political crimes, dissident and family sources said yesterday.