Fidel Castro emerges to claim bin Laden is CIA puppet

Fidel Castro has said al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is a bought-and-paid-for CIA agent who always popped up when former US president George W Bush needed to scare the world, arguing that documents recently posted on the internet prove it.

"Any time Bush would stir up fear and make a big speech, bin Laden would appear threatening people with a story about what he was going to do," Castro told state media at a meeting with a Lithuanian-born writer known for his conspiracy theories about world domination. "Bush never lacked for bin Laden's support. He was a subordinate."

Castro said documents posted on WikiLeaks.org - the website that recently released thousands of pages of classified documents from the Afghan war - "effectively proved he was a CIA agent." He did not elaborate. The comments, published in Communist Party daily Granma yesterday, were the latest in a series of provocative statements by the 84-year-old revolutionary, who has emerged from prolonged illness to warn that the planet is on the brink of nuclear war.

Castro had predicted global conflict would mean cancellation of the final rounds of the World Cup in South Africa earlier this year. He later apologised for jumping the gun. Last week, he began highlighting the work of Daniel Estulin, who wrote a trilogy of books highlighting the Bilderberg Club, whose members meet once a year behind closed doors and whose members include former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and senior US and European officials.

During the meeting, Estulin told Castro the real voice of bin Laden was last heard in late 2001, not long after the 11 September attacks. He said the person heard warning of terror attacks after that was a "bad actor".