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WASHINGTON,
September 29
CONGRESS APPROVES THE SALE OF FOOD AND MEDICINE TO CUBA
Republican leaders in Congress and farm-state senators on Thursday
agreed to allow the sale of agricultural products to Cuba, with
restrictions on financing, while blocking expanded travel to the
island.
The agreement doesn’t allow the sale of Cuban products
to the United States.
House leaders and Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, a Miami Republican,
called the plan a done deal. It would allow cash sales to Cuba
and Iran but ban the use of U.S. credits or financing by American
financial institutions. Some farm-state senators, including Republican
Pat Roberts of Kansas and Chuck Hegel of Nebraska, complained
that financing restrictions in the deal are so onerous that U.S.
farmers will realize few benefits.
Díaz-Balart said he is satisfied that the language in the
legislation is restrictive, making it difficult for U.S. companies
to do business in Cuba because they will have to go through third
countries for financing. “Some sales are possible, if they
go through third countries,'' said Díaz-Balart. ``But Castro
doesn't purchase without public financing, because he doesn't
pay what he owes.'' House leaders allied with Díaz-Balart
and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, another Miami Republican, were also
able to fight off major changes in the travel ban.
SYDNEY,
September 27
AT LAST, U.S. BEATS CUBA 4-0
FOR FIRST BASEBALL GOLD MEDAL
A ragtag band of minor leaguers destroyed a dynasty
and brought home America's first baseball gold. With a U.S. flag
hanging behind the bench a team of recent draft picks and major
league castoffs beat mighty Cuba 4-0 on Wednesday.
No one had ever done this to Cuba, the Big Communist
Machine of international baseball. No gold? They didn't even get
a run off Ben Sheets.
“We didn't win it, but the silver
medal is also valuable,'' manager Sergio Borges said bitterly.
“We do not feel demoralized…’’ However, they
sure looked it. The Cubans were crying as they bowed their heads
to accept their silver medals, the confirmation that their dynasty
was over.
Manager Tommy Lasorda draped in the American
flag paraded with his team around the outfield grass. “I
can't believe how great I feel! I dedicate the win to the Cuban exiles in Florida,” Lasorda shouted as he ran off the field.
HAVANA, September 27
THE CUBANS FEAR ANOTHER CRISIS OF ELECTRICAL BLACKOUTS
Very carefully, the Cuban government maneuvers to prevent that
the high international prices of the petroleum affects even more
the daily life of the people in the island, where at this moment
exists fear of another electrical blackout crisis.
"There are not reasons to be alarmed or to return to the
worst moments" of the economic crisis that affects to the
country for the last 10 years, "but it is necessary that
everyone knows that the impact of the prices of the petroleum
doesn't only affect to the electricity and transportation",
vice-president Carlos Lage informed yesterday the local press.
Between 1993 and 1995, the Cuban people suffered systematic electrical
blackouts that maintained virtually paralyzed the whole economy
of the island.
VENEZUELA,
September 27
DESPERATE VISIT OF LAGE TO VENEZUELA
The visit of Carlos Lage to Caracas last weekend makes one to
think that the petroleum supply in Cuba is reaching the bottom
of the barrel. Cuba is suffering the effects of the high prices
of oil but this problem has been increased in the island due to
the lack of international credits to face the crisis and for the
lamentable failure of the Cuban economy.
During his brief visit to Caracas, Lage was received by president
Hugo Chávez, after meeting with the Venezuelan Minister
of Finances, José Rojas, and Hector Ciavaldini, president
of the state Petroleum Company of Venezuela.” The consumption
of petroleum that we import is around six million annual tons
and we are buying 60 percent from the Venezuelan market",
Lage declared to the Venezuelan press.
Cuba pays daily more than $1.3 millions in fuel and, according
to official estimates, this summer the consumption represents
a minimum of 10,000 tons of fuel every 24 hours.
Annually, the island consumes around two millions of tons
of crude oil and other four millions tons of derived, that, according
to data from the Ministry of the Basic Industry, are equal to
about 150,000 daily barrels. The national production of petroleum
and gas reached last year the 2.2 million tons, and the forecasts
for the current year are of 3.4 million tons. However, the country
needs several millions of extra dollars to cover its future invoice
of oil.
SYDNEY, September 26
UNITED STATES BASEBALL TEAM (6-1)
DEFEATED SOUTH KOREA AND NOW WILL FACE CUBA FOR THE GOLD
Doug Mientkiewicz cleared the wall for
a solo homer and a 3-2 sensational victory early today over South
Korea, the same team he beat with a grand slam a week earlier.
After a long night of dispute, downpour and delay, they were headed
to their country's first gold medal game - against archrival Cuba,
the only team that beat them in the preliminaries.
In the gold medal game Wednesday morning, the United
States will face defending champion Cuba, while South Korea and
Japan will play in the afternoon for the Bronze.
The United States is in first place in the Olympic
Games with 63 medals: 25 Gold, 15 Silver
and 23 Bronze. While Cuba is in 13th place with a
total of 11 medals: 3 Gold, 6 Silver and
2 Bronze.
HAVANA, September 25
CUBANS RALLY AGAINST U.S.
Dressed in a military uniform and waving a small
Cuban flag, Cuban dictator President Fidel Castro was at the front
of the people who rallied for more than an hour across from the
U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
“Down with the murderous law!'' chanted the
crowd, referring to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act.
However, the United States has repeatedly stated that Castro
is to blame for desperate attempts to leave the island. In reality,
the Cubans are fleeing four decades of failed socialist economic
policies, a dictatorial political system and strict controls on
who emigrates legally. Cuban dissidents also argue that Castro's
``totalitarian'' system is the cause of the illegal departures,
mainly by boat across the shark-infested sea.
The rally came less than a week after a Cuban pilot abandoned
the country aboard a single-engine crop-duster plane, taking with
him nine relatives and friends. Last week's dramatic air departure
evidently has caused special consternation in the Cuban government
because the pilot, Angel Lenin Iglesias, and his wife, Mercedes
Martinez, were not only members of the Cuban Communist Party but
came from families with strong ties to the party’s nomenclature.
PINAR
DEL RIO, September 24
MIXING MEDICINES DUE TO LACK
OF DISTILLED WATER (CAMCO’s Department
of Engineers)
The lack of equipment to produce distilled water
limits pharmaceutical production in Pinar del Río. The
dispensary here has not had the equipment for over three years
and must obtain the distilled water from other facilities of the
Ministry of Public Health.
Other municipalities face the same situation. In
Minas, for example, the production of syrups for cold and asthma
barely supplies 70 percent of the demand. The technicians in this
field cannot explain the reasons for the crisis, since the necessary
equipment is available in countries with which the Cuban government
has excellent relations.
LOS PALACIOS, September 24
FAMILY IN CUBA MOURNS JUDEL PUIG
Relatives and friends
gathered together Saturday to remember 23-year-old Judel Puig
Martínez -- killed while trying to flee Cuba last week.
One of 10 people who fled Cuba Tuesday on a Soviet-era cropduster
piloted by Iglesias, Puig was the only one who died when the plane
was forced to ditch at sea after it ran out of fuel. Iglesias,
his wife, and the other passengers -- including Puig's half-brother
Pabel -- have been admitted to the United States.
Judel’s mother Aleida Martínez Paredes and other family
members bristled at Cuban government reports that portrayed the
Puig brothers as delinquents and Iglesias as irresponsible and
reckless. Aleida
said she is upset to see the Cuban government printing negative
stories about her family. She said her son had worked on a dairy
farm and at a bakery, but that he was unemployed at present because
those places didn't have work for him. And Pabel Puig worked at
a refrigerator shop for the state. He wasn't a free agent, as
was reported in the newspaper Granma, according to his mother.
CIEGO DE AVILA, September 24
CAUSEWAY IMPACTS ECOSYSTEM IN
CUBAN KEYS (CAMCO’s Department of Engineers)
A causeway to link the main
island to the keys off the southern coast of Ciego de Avila province
will impact the fragile ecosystem, some say here.
The government is building the causeway to exploit
the keys as a hard-currency tourism region. The causeway is a
solid wall of stone that alters the flow of natural currents,
affecting the life cycles of coastal species and dessicating naturally
swampy areas.
HAVANA, September 23
THE CUBAN DICTATOR WANTS THE RETURN OF LENIN
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has demanded that the U.S. government
returns Angel Lenin Iglesias, the pilot of the light plane AN-2
that plunged into the sea after escaping from Pinar del Río,
Cuba. Lenin is a nephew of Joel Iglesias, the youngest commander
of the triumphant Revolutionary Army headed by Castro in January
1959. Joel Iglesias, the son of a member of the Cuban Communist
Party, was only 15years old in 1957, when he joined the Rebel
Army. When the revolutionary troops led by Castro entered Havana
in January 1959, it was mentioned that Joel, at age 17, was the
youngest army commander of the revolution.
In 1960 he became the first secretary of the nascent Association
of Revolutionary Youths, before it became the powerful Union of
Communist Youths that he also led until being replaced in 1964
while holding the rank of colonel.
The Cuban government acknowledged the pilot's family connection
with members of the Cuban Communist Party, describing him as coming
``from a revolutionary family, as is evident from his name,''
a reference to ``Lenin'' -- the name of the leader who founded
the Soviet Union in 1917.
HAVANA,
September 23
CUBA PROSECUTES TWO CUBAN EXILES
Two Cuban exile residents of Miami who disembarked two years ago
in the north coast of Pinar del Río, were put on trial
yesterday in the provincial capital. They were charged with acts
against the state security.
Ernestino Abreu Horta, 76 years old, and Vicente Marcelino Rodríguez,
66, face 26 years in prison for supposedly intending to create
a guerilla base in the western part of the country. Both men landed
in Cuba on May 19 1998. They were apprehended nine days later
in the town of Pons, in the mountainous municipality of Matahambre
Mines.
According to communist authorities, the Cuban exiles disembarked
in a motorboat in which they carried rifles, guns and anti-government
propaganda. Although the accused denied then the charges of seeking
to foment rebellion, they yesterday admitted to have traveled
to the island in what they said it would be a personal’s
political crusade.
MIAMI,
September 21
A 6-YEAR BOY WHO SURVIVED THE PLANE CRASH IN A SHOPPING SPREE
Since the lucky six-year-old Cuban boy who survived the plane
crash in the Gulf of Mexico was in need of shoes, he went on a
shopping spree Thursday at Kmart as immigration officials decided
whether to allow him and eight other survivors to stay in the
United States.
Andy Fuentes got the shoes he wanted and also got a basketball,
a football, a baseball bat, a helmet, and blue socks; not the
white ones his relatives suggested.
''I had a pair of skates in Cuba,'' the boy told his Cuban-American
grandfather and uncle in Spanish. ''They were made of plastic,
and they were garbage.''
His happiness contrasted with his parents' hospitalization and
the drama of the crash of a plane that left Cuba without permission
Tuesday. The FBI concluded today the flight was not a hijacking,
eliminating a threat of criminal prosecution.
The six new Cuban exiles who have been held at Krome Detention
Center, were released today and taken to a local clinic to receive
a medical checkup before being released to family members in Miami,
"All would be paroled to the United States, allowing them
to begin the process of applying for residency," said an
immigration official.
KEY
WEST. September 21
RESCUED CUBANS ARRIVE IN U.S.
Amid flashing cameras, the eight Cuban
survivors walked or were carried onto U.S. soil from a Coast Guard
cutter
WASHINGTON,
D.C., September 8.
ALARCON DENIED VISA FOR WASHINGTON’S TRIP.
The president of Cuba's parliament, Ricardo Alarcón,
has been denied a visa to visit Washington to attend a meeting
of the Congressional Black Caucus next week. The organization,
which groups black members of the U.S. Congress, was informed
on Wednesday by Cuban officials that Alarcón, a former
Cuban foreign minister and U.N. ambassador, would not be coming.
A delegation of the caucus, led by Democratic Representative James
Clyburn of South Carolina, invited Alarcón to attend the
Washington Sept. 13-16 conference during a trip to Cuba in May.
A spokesman at the U.S. State Department said,
“He has a visa that is only valid for New York.''
He declined to elaborate. Another department official said the
United States does not give top Cuban government or Communist
Party officials visas, except to attend U.N. activities in New
York.
Officials at the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank which focuses
on Latin American affairs and which had invited Alarcón
to a breakfast meeting next week, said it had also been told he
had not been granted a visa and would not be coming to the meeting.
MIAMI,
September 8.
CUBANS FOUND ON REMOTE FLORIDA ISLAND
Twenty-two Cubans found on a remote island in the Florida Keys
said they left the communist Caribbean island on a homemade raft
but their story was being investigated, U.S. authorities said
yesterday. The U.S.
Border Patrol said the Cubans, 18 men, three women and one child,
were found on Wednesday by the U.S. Coast Guard on Marquesas Islands,
about 20 miles (32 km) west of Key West. All were in good health,
said the spokesman.
The Cubans told authorities they left Orozco, Cuba, on Sunday
on a homemade raft constructed of metal drums and were picked
up by a 24-foot (7.3-metre) Cuban fishing boat that dropped them
in the Florida Keys. U.S. authorities often view the stories told
by undocumented Cuban migrants skeptically.
Under the U.S. “wet foot/dry foot'' immigration policy,
Cubans who are intercepted at sea are usually returned to Cuba
while those who set foot on land are generally allowed to stay
in the United States. The Cubans were transported from the Florida
Keys to Krome Detention Center near Miami.
NEW
YORK, September 7.
CASTRO EXCLUDED FROM CLINTON’S DIPLOMATIC RECEPTION.
The Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was excluded from the invitation
list for President Clinton's diplomatic reception for world leaders
tonight. However, Castro managed to exchange a few words with
the president and shake his hand. Up to now, the encounter with
Clinton has been the only important event of Castro’s attendance
to the Millennium Summit.
Castro approached Clinton yesterday at the end of a luncheon at
United Nations in which about 160 world leaders gathered. “They
exchanged a few words. It was nothing substantive,'' said White
House press secretary Joe Lockhart. National Security Council
spokesman P.J. Crowley called it “a momentary exchange.''
It was the first time Clinton and Castro had ever spoken although
they've been in the same room before, Crowley said. Lockhart originally
said Clinton and Castro did not shake hands. But after checking
further with someone who was in the room, a White House official
said Lockhart was wrong and that Castro shook Clinton hands.
Crowley said Castro and the representatives of Libya and Iraq
were not invited to a reception hosted by Clinton at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art Thursday night. The United States does not have
diplomatic relations with Cuba and maintains economic sanctions
against Castro's government.
WASHINGTON,
D.C., el 7 de septiembre.
ALARCON PLANS TO VISIT WASHINGTON WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION.
The president of the National Assembly of Cuba, Ricardo Alarcón,
plans to meet next Tuesday, September 12, in Washington with Cuban-American
sympathizers of the Cuban regime, managers, politicians and North
American academics in an encounter hosted by Interamerican Dialogue,
an independent organization with headquarters in the capital.
This would be the first occasion in which a Cuban official
of high level, as Alarcón, participates in a public forum
of this nature in Washington, D.C.
Alarcón arrived on Tuesday in New York, as a member of
the Cuban delegation that participates in the Summit of the Millennium
of United Nations (UN). A high official from the Department of
States’ Office of Cuban Affairs said that Alarcón’s
visa doesn't authorize him to leave the limits of the UN. Those
limits are of 25 miles around the headquarters of the UN, that
is the type of visa the United States has granted to Alarcón
in accordance with this nation’s commitments with the world
body, The official also added that he preferred not to speculate
in the measures the Department of State could adopt in case that
Alarcón decides to travel to Washington without authorization.
WASHINGTON,
D.C., September 7.
DISTINGUISHED MARINE GENERAL TO COMMAND THE SOUTHERN COMMAND.
Marine Lieutenant General Peter Pace has been selected to become
the next Commander in Chief of the Southern Command. General Pace
is presently commander of the U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Atlantic,
based in Norfolk, Virginia.
The Southern Command, Southcom
as it is called, is the Pentagon's Miami-based nerve center for
Latin America and the Caribbean, staffed by about 1,000 service
members and civilians. General Pace will be in charge of U.S.
military activities across 12.5 million square miles stretching
from the Florida Keys through South America. Southcom was based
in the Canal Zone of Panama for decades until it moved to Miami
in 1997. Now Southcom has a permanent presence of 2,479 Army,
Navy and Air Force personnel. A Pentagon official recently stated
that Southcom demonstrates the United States’s desire to
be a good neighbor in the Americas and illustrate the grandeur
of a civilian-controlled military, a good example for emerging
democracies.
Testifying before the Senate
Armed Forces Committee, General Pace said a main concern in his
new job would be the illicit drug industry, money laundering,
armas trafficking, illegal migration and criminally supported
insurgencies. Only Cuba, he said, does not have a form of democracy
in the region, but “transnational elements threaten the
fragile democracies of the region.”
NEW YORK, September 7.
CASTRO ATTACKS DE UNITED NATIONS.
The Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, using his old rhetoric, attacks
the United Nations. Dressed in an elegant blue suit and reading
his five-minute speech, Castro declared:
“There is
chaos in our world, three dozen developed and wealthy nations
that monopolize the economic, political and technological power
have joined us in this gathering to offer more of the same
recipes that have only served to make us poorer, more exploited
and more dependent,''
Castro also complained that a radical reform of the United
Nations to make it more democratic was not being discussed “in
this old institution to make it an institution that truly represents
the interests of all nations of the world.
WASHINGTON,
D.C., September 7.
INTELLIGENCE REPORT 23 (CUBA) (By
Marcelo Fernández-Zayas)
Cuba has tried to hide the production and storage of its biological
and toxic weapons. The United States has made known to Cuba that
this storage of biological weapons is extremely “dangerous”
and something that is in the way of a possible "normalization”
of the relations between the two nations. Cuba has denied the
possession of such weapons, adducing that its experiments in the
biological field have been confined to the area of medicine and
health.
Between June and September of 1999, an "appreciable
quantity of these toxic substances" was stored in special
undergrounds in the Soledad property, kilometer 18 of the highway
that unites the town of Guáimaro with the sugar mill Amancio Suárez, in the municipality of Guáimaro.
It appears there was an accident and the content of these recipients
contaminated Lieutenant Colonel Desiderio Meléndez whom,
at the moment, is close to die. This military’s family has
been advised “no to talk about the matter.”
Similar “strange” illnesses " are affecting
the population of Guáimaro and Cascorro. The neighbors of these towns are alarmed. Up to this moment,
American authorities have not commented on this topic.
Does it represent a danger to the United
States? How this continent’s environmentalist groups will
react? Will the Cuban government deny the facts of this documented
tragedy?
NEW
YORK, September 6.
HEAVILY
ARMED BODY GUARDS ESCORT CASTRO.
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is in New York City under heavily
armed bodyguards. In addition, thousands of police officers were
deployed, staking out every corner. Police were getting ready
for the 91 scheduled demonstrations and hundreds of motorcades
surrounding the largest gathering of world leaders in history.
Despite the adulation surrounding Castro's visit, the mayor of
New York called him a murderer, and Cuban exiles called for his
arrest. The mayor said he believes Castro could be charged in
New York because it is the first federal jurisdiction he entered.
“I understand the frustration and the anger of the Cuban-Americans
at the murder of innocent Cubans,'' the mayor said at a press
briefing. “It's not the first time Castro killed innocent
people.'' As a former associate attorney general who served
during the Mariel boatlift, the mayor said he “had to deal
with what Fidel Castro did to Miami and the rest of America.''
Since this is Castro's
first visit to the United States since the Pinochet arrest, the
visit announcement gave rise to Cuban exile calls for his arrest.
Castro's itinerary is being kept secret, but he is expected to
attend a U.N. luncheon today, where President Clinton will also
be present. On Friday, Castro will attend a service at the Riverside
Church in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Hundreds of people have
already begun their protests, including a South Florida group
of Cuban Americans.
NEW YORK, September 6.
RELIGIOUS REPRESSION IN CUBA IS DENOUNCED.
In a report prepared
by the Department of State, Cuba is identified as a nation that
violates religious rights.
The report, presented
yesterday, insists that freedom of religion is one of the foundations
of democracy and accuses the government of Cuba of restricting
those rights. The
report points out the Cuban authorities’ refusal to open
more space for religious practice and education, one of the requests
made by Pope Juan Pablo II during his visit to the archipelago
in January of 1998. During his speeches, the Supreme Pontiff,
requested the liberation of political prisoners, he also spoke
about the mistakes of communism and the need of freedom and justice
for Cuba.
WASHINGTON,
D.C., September 6.
AUDITORS RECOMMEND EXPANSION OF USAID CUBA PROGRAM.
In February, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
contracted the independent auditor firm Price-Waterhouse-Coopers
to evaluate the effectiveness of its Cuba program, established
under a provision of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. The program provides
grants to groups seeking a peaceful transition to democracy in
Cuba
The auditors have determined that the program was “satisfactory
and effective” and recommended its expansion. The auditors
also favored an end to a prohibition on spending U.S. government’s
money inside the island.
Since the beginning of the program, about 6.5 million in grants
have been approved for exile groups working with non-governmental
organizations, political dissidents and independent writers in
Cuba. An interagency group comprised of officials from USAID,
the State Department, the National Security Council, the Treasury
Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Commerce
Department, selects grant recipients. However, key members of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including Sen. Jesse Helms
(R-N.C.), can place a “hold” on a proposed award if
they are not satisfied with the merit of the project.
HAVANA,
September 5.
FIDEL CASTRO LANDED IN NEW YORK.
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro flew to New York today for the Millennium
Summit hosted by the United Nations. Castro's decision to attend
the important event was probably inspired in part by the successful
conclusion for Cuba of the lengthy custody fight over Elián
González.
The Cuban government, which keeps Castro's movements secret for
security reasons, did not announce his departure from Havana.
However, a Cuban official simply said, soon after midday today,
that he had just touched down in New York. Ever seeking publicity,
Castro may take another stroll in Harlem, where he petulantly
moved his delegation to the Theresa hotel on his first visit to
New York in 1959.
Even before Havana announced Castro's trip, some Cuban exiles
were taking preemptive action. A leading Cuban-American congressman,
Lincoln Diaz-Balart, called on President Bill Clinton to deny
him an entry visa. Seeking to evoke a Pinochet-style scenario,
Diaz- Balart added that even if Castro was granted a visa, he
should be arrested for “crimes
against humanity.'' At
the same time, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani also denounced
Castro’s visit, calling him a ``murderer'' whom “America
should not fool itself into thinking ... is some kind of benign
dictator,'' he said.
NEW
YORK, September 5.
LIFTING THE EMBARGO IS CASTRO’S MAIN OBJECTIVE.
Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro
will arrive today Tuesday in New York to participate in the United
Nations’ Summit of the Millennium. It is expected that he
will seek help from members of the press, businessmen and political
leaders to force the United States’ lifting of its economic
embargo to Cuba.
As previously announced by
the Cuban chancellery, the message of Cuba to the UN will be,
among other topics, the necessity to reform and to democratize
the United Nations, and to propel a "globalization of solidarity''.
Encouraged by the success
of his campaign to return Elián González to Cuba,
Castro is now attacking the American embargo and the Cuban Adjustment
Law. In demanding their elimination, he has continued organizing
popular mobilizations throughout the island, and maintaining daily
one-hour national television programs on the two topics. It appears
that his new campaign has not been able to sensitize the American
public opinion in the same manner that it did during the Elián’s
saga.
HOLGUIN, September 4.
ANOTHER INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST IMPRISONED.
The independent journalist Juan Carlos Garcell has been object
of threats by officials from the State Security in the city of
Sagua of Tánamo, Holguín. On August 15, Garcell
was arrested by police agents and taken to a police station where
he was threatened with prison if he didn't collaborate with them.
Since Garcell refused to cooperate, two days later, in the night
of August 17, he was arrested again, and driven to a state building
in the outskirts of the city of Sagua of Tánamo.
There, he was interrogated again and threatened for revealing
confidential information on the Canadian company Sherrit; Garcell
answered that he had only divulged the names of the Cubans who
presently work in that mixed company between the government of
Cuba and Canadian capitalists.
HAVANA,
September 4.
FRANCE DEPORTS A STOWAWAY CUBAN.
On August 12, taking advantage of strong rain, Roberto
Viza EgŸes avoided the security guards of José Martí
Airport, in Rancho Boyeros, in Havana and hid in a container of
an Air France airplane.
He was not aware, however, that the airplane was heading
to Paris. In Cuba he left his wife and an 18 months daughter.
During the 14-hour flight, Viza suffered icy temperatures, lack
of oxygen and a terrible nasal bleeding. He arrived alive to the
Parisian airport Charles of Gaulle on August 13. The French press
classified of "miraculous '' the fact that he survived the
flight.
However, on Friday, after a French tribunal rejected his
political asylum application, citing lack of proofs that he was
persecuted in Cuba, Viza was quickly deported to Havana where
he arrived escorted by French soldiers.
Presently, Viza remains imprisoned in the Villa Marista,
Cuba's Headquarters of State Security.
MIAMI,
September 3.
CUBAN EXILES DEMAND CUBAN DICTATOR FIDEL CASTRO'S ARREST.
The announcement by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro last Friday that
he plans to attend next week's United Nations Millennium Summit
in New York, has sparked exiles to renew demands that he be arrested
for murder the moment he lands on U.S. soil.
"This morning, the United States government has been informed
that the compañero -- comrade -- Fidel will lead the Cuban
delegation,'' a statement from the Cubans read. ``Now everything
depends on the attitude that the U.S. government assumes.'' United
Nations rules prohibit the State Department from denying Castro
a visa. Treaties also give visiting heads of state immunity from
arrest or detention.
Department of Justice spokeswoman
Carole Florman said it would be irresponsible to speculate whether
federal authorities could arrest Castro.
HAVANA, September 3.
ANOTHER FOREIGNER DEPORTED BY THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT.
Cuban authorities on Friday put Reynaldo César Chávez
Avila, 30, a Mexican security expert on a plane bound for Mexico
City accompanied by Mexican Ambassador Heriberto Galindo.
Chávez, a human rights activist had been arrested when
he arrived in Cuba on Aug. 4. Security agents at Havana Airport picked him up when custom
officials found in his baggage leaflets, a videocassette, two
videos, a recorder, and a typewriter. From the airport, he was
taken to a detention center for questioning near the Cuban capital.
Chavez’s belongings were confiscated. One tape was about
Cuba's prison system and the other about the Group of Four, a
reference to four Cuban dissidents arrested in July 1997 for criticizing
a Cuban Communist Party document. Chavez worked in Mexico's Interior
Secretariat as an adviser on security affairs until July 30 when
he resigned to devote time to a human rights group called La Otra
Cuba, or ``The Other Cuba.'' The Other Cuba advocates greater
individual freedoms on the island.
WASHINGTON, D.C., September
1st.
CONGRESSMAN REQUESTS TO CLINTON THAT CUBAN DICTATOR FIDEL CASTRO’S
VISA BE DENIED.
The republican congressman from Florida Lincoln Díaz-Balart
has requested president Bill Clinton that Cuban ruler Fidel Castro’s
visa to visit New York next week be denied. In a letter to Clinton,
the legislator, of Cuban origin, asked that, in case the United
States grants the visa, Castro's detention should be ordered so
that he be judged for crimes committed against humanity.
“I have been informed that you could grant a visa to the
Cuban dictator, the criminal of war and murderous Fidel Castro,
to travel to the United States to participate in the so called
'Summit of the Millennium' of the United Nations, in New
York'', Díaz-Balart points out in his letter, disclosed
in Miami. For the mentioned facts, he added, “I ask you
to deny Castro a visa to enter the United States. '' But, in case
the Cuban president steps on American soil, `` I request you order
the Attorney General (Janet Reno) to take all necessary steps
to detain and prosecute Fidel Castro'' for thousands of crimes
and tortures committed in Cuba. Specifically, the Cuban dictator
has perpetrated a systematic campaign of repression and terror,
including murders and tortures, against those that have opposed
his régime since he took the power in Cuba in January of
1959 ''
WASHINGTON,
D.C., September 2.
US
WILL RESUME MIGRATION TALKS WITH CUBA.
In a news briefing on Thursday, the State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States would
make a date with Cuba for migration talks after an offer from
Havana, which had postponed them in June saying it was too busy
with the case of shipwreck survivor Elián Gonzalez. “The
Cubans have informed us that they are now prepared to resume these
migration talks,” he said the spokesman also stated that
the 15-page diplomatic note with Havana's proposal otherwise contained
”the same tired old rhetoric'' the communist island used
in the 1960s.” The Cuban foreign ministry's note was sent
late on Wednesday in response to a formal U.S. complaint early
on Monday accusing Havana of preventing U.S. visa-holders from
leaving the island and urging them to resume the talks.
HAVANA,
September 2.
AMERICAN CITIZEN ARRESTED AND DEPORTED.
An elderly American citizen named Douglas Schimmel from Chicago,
who was detained by authorities in Cuba and held for three weeks
after he met political dissidents on the island, was put on a
plane back to the United States on Thursday. Schimmel had been
held at Villa Marista, Cuba's Headquarters of State Security.
Schimmel was detained by police in Havana in the first half of
August after meeting anti-government dissidents, including leading
human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez.
Sánchez, who monitors cases of political detentions
and imprisonment, said he recalled meeting Schimmel on August
7 after the American had sought the contact. They had discussed
the political situation on the island and Schimmel had intended
to meet other Cuban dissidents, Sanchez said.
Sánchez added he subsequently heard from a U.S.
diplomat in Havana that Schimmel had been detained.
The elderly U.S. citizen was returned to the United States
on the same day that the Cuban government was to deport three
Swedish journalists who were also detained this week after meeting
Cuban dissident journalists.
HAVANA,
September 1st.
CASTRO’S VISIT TO NEW YORK CONSIDERED.
The Cuban dictator Fidel Castro may travel to New York to attend
the U.N. Millennium Summit. If he does not make the trip, he will
be represented by a top official to argue against what he calls
the hijacking of the organization “by a small and powerful
group of countries.''
In a news conference in Havana, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez
Roque said that “A
decision will be made in the next 72 hours'' on whether Castro
will visit New York for the first time since 1995, when he addressed
the 50th anniversary U.N. session,
He said he was unworried about the possibility of violence or
an assassination attempt against Castro in New York if he attends
the Sept. 6-8 U.N. meeting. ``No threat or risk is capable of
scaring anybody in this country,” he emphatically stated.
The Millennium Summit is expected to bring together more than
150 world leaders for discussions that will focus on the role
of the United Nations in the 21st century.
HAVANA,
August 31.
CUBA FIRES BACK IN U.S. VISA PROTEST.
Yesterday, Cuba blasted as false and malicious a complaint from
Washington that Havana was preventing Cubans with U.S. visas from
leaving the Caribbean island. In a heightening war of words over
why Cubans keep making the perilous 90-mile trip over shark-infested
sea to the United States, Havana said Washington's protest was
a suspiciously timed, defamatory publicity maneuver. It is a fact
that thousands of Cubans have died in recent decades trying to
cross to Florida.
Since the custody dispute over Elián González, Cuba
has kept up a campaign of weekly rallies, daily-televised round-tables
and other events to condemn the Cuban Adjustment Act. Havana has
sought to harness political momentum from the saga of Elián
to overturn the Adjustment Act and mobilize opposition to the
U.S. embargo. The
Elián affair briefly brought Havana and Washington together
in their united desire to send the boy home, against the wish
of his Miami family and their anti-Castro supporters.
But any political truce that that may have produced has blown
apart in recent days, with the U.S. protest and, in a parallel
issue, the U.S. refusal to give a visa to a top Cuban official
to attend the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a world legislative meeting,
that will be celebrated in New York.
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