Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Guess Who Has WMDs Now

With Saddam now in U.S. custody, bin Laden's whereabouts are the Bush administration's most important unsolved mystery in this election year. Bush has now changed his game plan regarding the terrorists and no longer wants to “drive them from place to place” thus giving the US a pretext for military and political action against whichever country it chooses, to win the election he needs to net a big one, preferably bin Laden.
#msg-2487990

If our spring offensive against remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan proves fruitless I then look for Bush possibly to invade Cuba or assassinate Castro.

"Everything is on the table" except for military action, said a State Department official who asked to remain anonymous. "We're thinking right now about ways that we can hasten transition. And that means helping the people and not the regime. Or even helping the people and hurting the regime."

Cuba has long been a primary concern for the United States thus we have Operation Northwoods, the plan put to President Kennedy by his military chiefs for a phony terrorist campaign complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans – as justification for an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy rejected it. He was assassinated a few months later. – John Pilger #msg-880256

A declassified 1964 US State Department document declares Fidel Castro to be an intolerable threat because he "represents a successful defiance of the United States, a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half," since the Monroe Doctrine declared that no challenge to US dominance would be tolerated in the hemisphere.
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=16353

History has shown election years breed heightened tensions between Washington and Havana as presidents and candidates ratchet up the rhetoric in a race for Cuban-American voters.

Considering Bush’s fondness for the dramatic, his loss of prestige, his drop in popularity and the massive hole he has dug for the United States this election year we might see more than the obligatory rhetoric aimed at Cuba. In my opinion if Bush doesn’t get bin Laden he could try for Castro.

President Bush knows well the power of that voting bloc, which helped him declare victory in Florida by a razor-thin margin in the 2000 election.

Cuban officials call the heightened tensions "very dangerous" for Cuba and accuse Bush of pandering to Cuban exiles for Florida's 27 electoral college votes. -Am

Cuba is still a threat, official tells Congress

March 31, 2004

WASHINGTON – Repeating and strengthening previous allegations about Cuba's alleged weapons of mass destruction program, a Bush administration official told Congress in written testimony yesterday that the island "remains a terrorist and (biological weapons) threat to the United States."

"I believe the case for the existence of a developmental Cuba (biological weapons research and development) effort is strong," said John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. Bolton made the allegations as part of a 25-page report on the development and spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Bolton also said Cuba has been successful at hiding details of its weapons program thanks to data passed to Havana by convicted spy Ana Belen Montes, the former senior Cuba analyst for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. Montes is serving 25 years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2002 to spying for Cuba.

South Florida Sun-Sent
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040331/news_1n31nation.html

Cuba rejects U.S. bioweapons charge
Thu 1 April, 2004 03:17

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba has rejected a renewed accusation by a senior U.S. official that it is developing biological weapons and said the charges were an attempt to seek a pretext to invade the communist-run island.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque called a news conference to deny the latest charge by John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the Bush administration, who made a similar accusation in 2002.

Bolton told Congress in written testimony on Tuesday that Cuba remains a "terrorist and (biological weapons) threat to the United States."

"I believe the case for the existence of a developmental Cuba (biological weapons) effort is strong," Bolton said in a 25-page statement to the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee.

Cuba has one of the most advanced biotech industries in Latin America, but insists research is solely dedicated to medical uses. It has research accords with a number of countries, including Iran.

"Mr. Bolton either suffers from schizophrenia, a permanent obsession with Cuba or doesn't have an ounce of shame," the Cuban foreign minister said.

"U.S. public opinion knows that our country has rejected the accusations that we produce violent weapons or conduct research on biological arms, that all this is false."

Bolton first accused Cuba of biological weapons research in 2002, on the eve of a visit to the island by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

Carter disputed the accusations in a statement he read out during a visit to Havana's Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, where he said there had been no mention of the matter during briefings in Washington prior to his trip.

"Bolton is only trying to present pretexts and justifications for a military attack on our country," Perez Roque said.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=486558§ion=news




Reference:
A new war of words with Cuba is likely

By Vanessa Bauzá
and Rafael Lorente STAFF WRITERS
Posted February 22 2004

HAVANA • As sure as election years bring stump speeches and confetti-strewn conventions, history has shown they also breed heightened tensions between Washington and Havana as presidents and candidates ratchet up the rhetoric in a race for Cuban-American voters.

President Bush knows well the power of that voting bloc, which helped him declare victory in Florida by a razor-thin margin in the 2000 election.

In recent months, the Bush administration has taken up a range of get-tough initiatives, including suspending semiannual migration talks, accusing Cuban President Fidel Castro of trying to destabilize Latin American democracies, announcing it will freeze any U.S. assets of Cuban-run travel agencies and even denying visas to all but one of the Grammy-nominated musicians on the island.

The heightened tensions come amid a surge in American food sales to Cuba, which totaled $256.9 million in 2003, an 80 percent increase over the previous year, according to the New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

Cuban officials call the heightened tensions "very dangerous" for Cuba and accuse Bush of pandering to Cuban exiles for Florida's 27 electoral college votes.

"As far as we are from November, the decisions this administration has taken indicate there can be many things still to come," said Miguel Alvarez, adviser to the president of Cuba's parliament, Ricardo Alarcon.

Ironically, Havana's negative view is shared by Bush critics in the Cuban-American community who say the president has only made cosmetic policy changes on Cuba, not substantive ones. They want Bush to create more effective broadcasts of Radio and TV Marti, increase support for dissidents and review the 1994 migration accords, which currently return most Cuban migrants intercepted at sea.

"I think this administration created tremendously heightened expectations, and many of its core constituency feel the expectations have not been met," said Cuban American National Foundation Executive Director Joe Garcia, one of Bush's staunchest critics.

A new committee headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell to prepare the United States for a post-Castro Cuba is likely to recommend additional initiatives by May that officials said aim to "hasten transition" to a democratic society.

"Everything is on the table" except for military action, said a State Department official who asked to remain anonymous. "We're thinking right now about ways that we can hasten transition. And that means helping the people and not the regime. Or even helping the people and hurting the regime."

Castro has responded by playing the familiar role of David to Bush's Goliath. He claims the administration is out to invade Cuba or even assassinate him. Earlier this month he rallied supporters and declared to booming applause: "If they invade us, I will die fighting."

Cuban officials are especially sensitive to claims that Castro, allied with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, is trying to destabilize Latin America. According to a recent editorial in the government-run newspaper Granma, the charges serve to "create a climate of artificial hysteria that would justify… a military adventure against our homeland, including the physical elimination of compañero Fidel."

The presidential race is sure to be closely monitored by officials in Havana, as it always is, with an eye toward watching how the Democratic candidates' more moderate positions on Cuba evolve.

"One of the big questions now is, since Bush has pursued a tougher policy on Cuba, are you going to end up with a Democratic candidate who is going to run to the right of Bush on Cuba or are they going to cede that territory?" said Dan Erikson, who heads the Cuba program at the Inter American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. "That will really tell whether tensions get higher over the course of the spring and summer."

The Democratic presidential candidates have so far been relatively quiet on the Cuba issue.

After meetings with exile leaders in South Florida, Democratic frontrunner Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts told NBC's Meet the Press in August that while he would like to see more Americans traveling to Cuba, he would not unilaterally lift sanctions that now ban trade and travel between the U.S. and Cuba.

"I am not prepared to lay down conditions at this time for lifting the embargo, because I believe that we need a major review of U.S. policy toward Cuba," Kerry told The Associated Press.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has also met with Cuban-American leaders. "Full sanctions should not be lifted until Castro and his brutal regime are gone," Edwards told The Associated Press.

The two underdogs, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Rev. Al Sharpton, who are hanging in the race despite single-digit primary returns, favor ending the embargo.

"Our policy toward Cuba has created misery for the Cuban people and has harmed our own national interests," Kucinich told The Associated Press.

The Cuban-American electorate, which makes up about 8 percent of all Florida voters, is not a monolithic community, said Sergio Bendixen, a Miami pollster who specializes in Hispanic public opinion.

"Election years tend to push U.S.-Cuba policy into the area of confrontation," Bendixen said. "It has been the conventional wisdom that the confrontation approach is the consensus point of view. That approach will probably still work in two-thirds of the electorate, but one-third is more moderate in their approach to Cuba policy. ... The question mark is, will the Democrats try to appeal to this group?"

Polls show increasing numbers of Cuban-Americans support engagement and dialogue with Cuba. Many Cubans who arrived in the 1980s and '90s have relatives on the island, and therefore many favor a less restrictive policy that does not clamp down on travel and cash remittances from the U.S. to Cuba.

Despite Castro's crackdown on 75 peaceful dissidents last April, U.S. foods sales to Cuba have created an anti-embargo lobby in some farm states and brought scores of Florida agribusiness executives to Havana.

Both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives last year voted to weaken the travel ban, but the move was stripped from legislation before it could reach the president's desk. Bush had threatened to veto any legislation that would lift the sanctions.

Cuban-American voters are predominantly Republican. Democrats generally only capture about 20 percent of the exile vote, said Alfredo Durán, former state chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. Durán hopes his party's candidates will reach out to those Cuban-Americans who favor a change in the status quo.

"If I were a presidential candidate in the state of Florida, I would say Cuba policy has to be reviewed," Durán said. "What would it do to economic development in this state? There would be a tremendous boom. And I would of course talk about traditional democratic values: education, healthcare, social security. That would fly even with the Cubans."

Vanessa Bauzá can be reached at [e-mail]

Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-acuba22feb22,0,1764979.story?coll=sfla-news-cuba