HAVANA (AP) — Alienated from European nations after a crackdown on the opposition and the execution of three ferry boat hijackers, President Fidel Castro closed ranks yesterday with friendly African, South American and Caribbean heads of government, including Jamaica’s prime minister, P J Patterson, at a UN conference.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez — who faces his own headaches at home, where last week he announced new plans by opponents to topple him — was among numerous leaders who joined Castro at the sixth UN Convention to Combat Desertification.

Chavez, whom Castro greeted personally at Havana’s airport Sunday night, delivered a nearly hourlong speech at the conference yesterday that almost threatened to rival some of the long-winded discourses for which the communist leader is famous.

“Don’t worry, there’s still time left over,” Castro joked afterward, adding, “Lunch might be delayed a little bit.”

In a fiery speech that strayed into a two-way chat from the podium with Castro, sitting several feet away, Chavez criticised leaders of powerful industrialised nations for promising grand solutions yet doing nothing to solve developing nation’s grave environmental and financial problems.

“What they have done is absolutely insignificant given the gravity of the problem,” Chavez said, blaming globalisation and failed neoliberal economic policies. “Neoliberalism has been defeated,” Chavez proclaimed to applause. “Now we’re going to bury it, starting this century.”

Chavez, a strong political ally and close personal friend of Castro, last year survived a short-lived coup attempt by opponents who accuse him of trying to amass power. They have called for a recall referendum later this year.

The approximately 20 heads of state from Africa and the Caribbean who arrived over the weekend for the UN conference also included the presidents of Zimbabwe, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Benin, Cape Verde, and the prime ministers of Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines. The heads of the African states Mali, Lesotho and Namibia arrived on Friday.

Many of the Africa presidents in attendance hail from countries whose independence struggles were aided by Cuba in the 1980s and 1990s.

“Coming to Cuba is to come to a country where there are true friends of Africa,” Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe said.

Mugabe is the target of widespread international criticism. Zimbabwe was suspended for a year from the decision-making councils of the Commonwealth of Britain and its former terrorities because of concerns about human rights and disputed presidential elections Mugabe narrowly won last year.

Notably absent from the Havana conference were high-ranking representatives of the European Union. The EU’s 15 members unanimously agreed to reduce high-level governmental visits and participation in cultural events in Cuba after the roundup of 75 dissidents and the firing squad executions of three ferry boat hijackers in April.

Castro, who replaced his military uniform with a dark blue suit and tie for yesterday’s session, did not mention the dispute. But he noted that despite a more than 40-year US economic blockade, Cuba has made progress in health, employment and education, while preserving the environment.

“In spite of huge obstacles, it is still possible to do a great deal to ensure that the environment is preserved and that humanity survives,” said Castro. He said such achievements are “incompatible with the atrocious economic system imposed upon the world, the ruthless neoliberal globalisation.”

Delegates from more than 170 nations have been in Cuba for a week for the United Nations conference aimed at combating the planet’s “desertification” — an alarming rate of soil degradation they said threatens the world’s food and water.

Participants have pledged to work toward financing solutions to the problem. The conference ends Friday.