Fidel Castro congratulates North Korea on anniversary of founding of North Korea's communist Workers' Party

Cuba’s Fidel Castro congratulated North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on his nation's 60 years of communist rule in a letter published Monday and spoke of both nations struggling against American hostility.

In an Oct. 2 letter published on the front page of the Cuban Communist Party's daily Granma, said the Cuban people fondly recalled Kim's late father, the North's founding ruler Kim Il Sung, the AP reports.

Castro wrote that over the past decade, Cuba and North Korea have faced "a complex and difficult situation after changes at the international level, including an increase in hostility and aggression by the American government."

The anniversary of the founding of North Korea's communist Workers' Party is among the nation's most important holidays. The party was founded in 1945 by the late Kim shortly after the Korean Peninsula was divided after its liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule. Kim Jong Il took over the party's highest post, general secretary, in 1997 following a three-year mourning period after his father's 1994 death. AM