1 Cuban President Fidel Castro on Wednesday said the first of 3,000 Cuban troops in Angola will return home Tuesday, the official Prensa Latina news agency reported.
2 Castro also warned that a plan to cut the number of U.N. peacekeeping troops in neighboring Namibia would permit South Africa to install a puppet government in that country, also known as South-West Africa.
3 'We will fulfill our obligations before the first of April,' Castro said in a dispatch monitored in Mexico City.
4 He was referring to the deadline for the pullout of the first 3,000 Cuban troops from Angola under a U.S.-brokered peace accord.
5 Angola, Cuba and South Africa signed a treaty Dec. 22 calling for the withdrawal of the 50,000-strong Cuban force from Angola within 30 months, half of them by Nov. 1.
6 Castro said a proposal to reduce the size of a U.N. peacekeeping force in Namibia from 7,500 to 3,000 troops would enable South Africa to maintain a powerbroker's role in Namibia and complicate the Cuban pullout from Angola.
7 'Difficulties have arisen' in enacting the accord 'for the independence of Namibia, for which SWAPO has fought many years, spilling the blood of many of its combatants,' Castro said, referring to the acronym for the South-West African Peoples Organization nationalist movement.
8 'Taking into account the growth of the South African forces .
9 in Namibia, the reduced number of (U.N.) troops could not guarantee these goals and would benefit South African plans to install a titular government in the country,' Castro declared.
10 He said Cuba had made its concerns known to the U.N. Security Council.
11 Castro's complaints echoed those made by Sam Nujoma, leader of SWAPO, earlier Wednesday in Havana, the Cuban capital.
12 Castro suggested that other African nations, including Nigeria, Ethiopia and Tanzania, contribute troops to the U.N. force, Prensa Latina said.
13 Cuba sent troops to Angola in 1975 to help the Marxist government fight invading South African troops and U.S.-backed rebels of the right-wing National Union of the Total Independence of Angola, called UNITA.

Castro also warned that a plan to cut the number of U . N . peacekeeping troops in neighboring Namibia would permit South Africa to install a puppet government in that country , also known as South - West Africa .
puppet government
What is a puppet government?