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POLITICS
- U.S.:
No New Moves from Bush on Cuba's National Day
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, (IPS) - Reflecting deep splits
inside his administration and the
Cuban-American community over future policy
toward Cuba, U.S. President George W. Bush
announced no new policy initiatives toward the
Caribbean nation on its national day Tuesday.
Instead, Bush met privately with a number of
dissidents and family members from the island
in the White House and released a short
statement expressing his ''hope ... for the
Cuban people to soon enjoy the same freedoms
and rights that we do''.
Officials said that senior officials, who were
still arguing about whether to take any new
initiatives just hours before Bush's meeting
with the dissidents, could not agree and that
the most dramatic step on which there was
consensus - the expulsion from the United
States of 14 Cuban diplomats - had already
been taken.
Political hardliners close to the more radical
sectors in the Cuban-American community in
Florida and New Jersey had reportedly argued
for reducing or cutting off remittances that
U.S.-based Cubans can send to their relatives
on the island and suspending charter flights
used by Cuban-Americans to fly directly to
their homeland.
But others argued that such steps would not
only play into President Fidel Castro's
efforts to stoke anti-U.S. feeling on the
island, but also alienate much of their own
community, including followers of the
increasingly moderate Cuban American National
Foundation (CANF).
In addition, congressional sentiment in favour
of lifting the ban on travel by U.S. citizens
to Cuba remains high, and, while the White
House has vowed to veto any legislation that
would ease Washington's 43-year-old trade
embargo, Bush's advisers concluded it would
make little sense to draw attention to the
divide now.
The result appears to be an impasse at the
policy-making level at a particularly
sensitive moment when bilateral ties have
plunged to their lowest level in at least a
decade.
Much of that is due to what U.S. officials and
even non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
traditionally more sympathetic to Havana
called a major crackdown by the Castro
government against dissident Cubans that began
as the U.S. invasion of Iraq got underway in
mid-March.
Some 75 dissidents were arrested and given
prison terms as long as 28 years for
subversion, while hijackers of a ferry who
tried to flee to the United States were
executed by firing squad after a summary trial
that rights groups denounced as unfair.
Many analysts here blamed Castro for seeking
to take advantage of Washington's invasion to
decapitate what they describe as a growing
pro-democracy movement energized by the
so-called Varela Project, a petition drive led
to force elections in Cuba based on a specific
provision of its constitution. More than half
of those arrested and imprisoned were
associated with the Project.
At the same time, some observers here said
that Bush contributed to growing concern in
Havana about U.S. intentions beginning last
May 20, when he announced a series of measures
to tighten the embargo in a speech to a
staunchly anti-Castro crowd in Miami.
It was also last spring that Undersecretary of
State for Arms Control and International
Security John Bolton publicly accused Havana
of developing biological weapons in what was
widely seen as an effort by administration
hard-liners to insert Cuba into the ''axis of
evil'' - North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Similar
accusations were repeated most recently last
September.
Late last year, the head of Washington's
Interest Section in Havana, James Cason, began
a series of high-profile meetings with Cuban
dissidents, attending meetings in their homes,
offering them the use of his residence for
meetings and publicly affirming his support
for them - all of which the Cuban government
interpreted as direct challenges.
In February, the Treasury Department proposed
new rules that would eliminate
''people-to-people'' educational travel to
Cuba, while senior U.S. officials began
issuing warnings to Havana that any mass
exodus from the island would be considered a
threat to U.S. national security. At the same
time, U.S. consular officials in Havana slowed
the approval of visas to Cubans who wanted to
emigrate to the United States.
''It is hard not to read these actions by the
Bush administration as a deliberate attempt to
increase tension between the two countries,''
said Geoff Thale, a Cuba specialist at the
Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)
here.
Washington then launched its invasion of Iraq
without securing the approval of the United
Nations Security Council, an action described
by the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican
Republic, Hans Hertell, as ''a very good
example for Cuba''.
On top of all this came the decision last week
to expel the 14 diplomats from the Cuban
missions here and at the United Nations in New
York City for ''conduct incompatible with
their diplomatic duties'', normally a phrase
used to refer to spying.
But the 'New York Times' reported several days
later that the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), which is responsible for all
counter-intelligence activities carried out in
the United States, had not made any findings
about espionage. It quoted one anonymous FBI
official as saying that the expulsions
appeared to be a political decision, a comment
strenuously denied by the White House.
Most analysts believe the expulsions were
designed to ease pressure for stronger action
by Cuban-American hard-liners closely
associated with Bush's brother, Florida
Governor Jeb Bush. They are associated with a
split-off from the CANF, the Cuban Liberty
Council, and include Representatives Lincoln
Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, two of
Castro's most militant foes in Congress.
But the expulsions left them with virtually
nothing practical to offer hard-liners
Tuesday, something which clearly disappointed
them. ''It's about time some action is
taken,'' Ninoska Perez Castellon of the
Liberty Council, told the 'Miami Herald'. ''I
don't want to hear any more 'Viva Cuba Libre'.''
On Sunday, Ricardo Alarcon, president of the
Cuban National Assembly, charged that the U.S.
administration was being urged by various
hardliners, including Jeb Bush, to invade
Cuba. The governor strongly denied ever making
that recommendation Monday, but the flap might
have been another reason why the White House
decided to play down the significance of
Tuesday's national day.
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