The World - News from Feb. 28, 1988

Cuban President Fidel Castro, in an interview to be broadcast today, emphatically denied any links to alleged drug trafficking by Panama’s military strongman Manuel A. Noriega. “It’s absurd, it’s a complete lie,” he told NBC News in an interview taped last week. Castro was responding to charges made at a U.S. Senate hearing earlier this month by former Noriega aide Jose I. Blandon. On his alleged contacts with Colombian drug lords, Castro said that had they existed, “we would have solved our foreign debt problem.”