HAVANA, March 7 (Reuters) - Cuba's ailing Fidel Castro praised Latin American presidents for putting their differences aside on Friday and avoiding an outbreak of war he said had been fostered by "Yankee plotting" in the region.

"(U.S.) imperialism was by all means the only loser," Castro, who retired last week after almost half a century at Cuba's helm, wrote in a column distributed to the press by e-mail in Havana.

The presidents of Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia, the United States' top ally in South America, shook hands at a regional summit and ended a border dispute that erupted with a Colombian raid into Ecuador to kill a guerrilla leader.

The handshake at a Rio Group meeting in Santo Domingo prevented the weeklong diplomatic crisis from escalating into the first war between Latin American countries in more than a decade.

Castro highlighted that the meeting took place outside the Organization of American States, the hemispheric forum often seen as a tool of U.S. power in Latin America.

"The essential thing is that no U.S. diplomats were present," said Castro, 81, whose country was suspended from the OAS in 1962, three years after he took power in a revolution.

Since dropping out of sight due to illness in 2006, the revolutionary firebrand has dedicated himself to writing articles, mainly attacking his arch enemy, the United States, and backing his main ally, Venezuela's populist President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez had blamed the United States for the border crisis between Colombia and Ecuador, and sent tanks to the Venezuelan border with Colombia. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle, editing by Todd Eastham)

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