CUBA:President George Bush has urged the international community to look past Fidel Castro's rule and help Cubans prepare for a new democracy after communism.
"Now is the time to support the democratic movement growing on the island. Now is the time to stand with the Cuban people as they stand up for their liberty. And now is the time for the world to put aside its differences and prepare for Cubans' transition to a future of freedom and progress and promise.
"The dissidents of today will be the nation's leaders. And when freedom finally comes, they will surely remember who stood with them," the president said in an address at the state department.
In his first statement on Cuba for four years, Mr Bush said that some of the horrors of Mr Castro's regime remained unknown to the rest of the world. "Once revealed, they will shock the conscience of humanity, and they will shame the regime's defenders and all those democracies that had been silent," he said.
He told Cubans to ignore claims that the US was hostile towards them and urged the military to turn on Mr Castro.
"You may have once believed in the revolution. Now you can see its failure," he said.
Next week, the United Nations general assembly will consider Cuba's annual resolution to eliminate the US embargo against the island. For the past 15 years, the UN has approved a resolution calling for the US economic and commercial embargo against Cuba to be repealed "as soon as possible" but Mr Bush gave no indication that Washington's policy is about to change.
Cuba's foreign minister Felipe Pérez Roque said Mr Bush wanted to reconquer Cuba by force. He said most Cubans back the revolution, making the idea of an internal uprising a "fantasy" and "politically impossible".
Mr Castro this week accused Mr Bush of pushing the world to the brink of a new world war and famine. "The danger of a massive world famine is aggravated by Mr Bush's recent initiative to transform foods into fuel," Mr Castro said in an essay titled Bush, Hunger and Death.