Cuba, U.S. refuse hurricane help
ILL WINDS Havana refuses U.S. aid after Hurricane Dennis; Washington snubs offer of Katrina assistance
avana is still on hold.
If anyone were
seeking to gauge the
ill winds that blow between Cuba and the United States, they need look no farther than the two governments’ behaviour during Katrina and Dennis. Two storms. Two solitudes.
In July, Washington offered help when Hurricane Dennis raged over Cuba, destroying 25,000 homes and damaging 130,000 more. But Havana said no — not as long as the U.S. maintains its four- decade economic embargo. Last month, in the wake of Katrina’s devastation, Havana offered emergency assistance, including 2,500 doctors. But Washington never even returned the call. “The United States government still hasn’t responded,” said Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, who was in Canada for several days this month to mark 60 years of uninterrupted diplomatic relations between Ottawa and Havana.
“ There are two things that Mr. Bush cannot seem to do. One is to normalize relations with Cuba. The other is to protect poor people in a hurricane. He is helpless to do it.” Some might say normalizing relations is a pas de deux and that Havana hasn’t shown much more inclination in that line over the years than has Washington. But Perez Roque insists there really isn’t much his government can do: “Cuba doesn’t have the solution in its hands.”
HAfter all, even as Hurricane Dennis was spinning over Cuba, Washington was proceeding with elaborate preparations for a change of government on the island, ruled since 1959 by Fidel Castro.
In July, the U. S. State Department established an office called the “ Cuba Transition Coordinator,” responsible for hastening a change of government in Cuba and for overseeing the U. S. response.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice picked Caleb McCarry, a former staff member of the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations, to fill the new post. She described the appointment as “ the keystone of our strategy . . . to accelerate the demise of Castro’s tyranny.” To Perez Roque, those are fighting words.
“ We see it as a gross interference in the internal affairs of Cuba,” he said, his voice rising in anger. “ We see it as a signal of the aggressive plans of the Bush administration against Cuba.”
During an hour- long interview conducted in his seventh- floor suite at a downtown Toronto hotel, the foreign minister spoke glowingly of two late Canadian icons — Pierre Trudeau and Terry Fox — both of whom are revered as heroes in Cuba. He expressed satisfaction with the present state of political relations between the two countries but said Ottawa is missing out on many lucrative Cuban trade opportunities by failing to provide credit guarantees to Canadian exporters.
At 40, Perez Roque is part of a new generation of Cuban leaders who have lived all their lives under communist rule. As Castro approaches his 80th birthday — to be celebrated next summer — speculation has inevitably increased about what will happen once the famous bearded revolutionary departs the scene.
Perez Roque discounted the possibility of an eventual power vacuum in his country.
“ We are tranquil and confident in the capacity of the new generation of leaders to keep our country independent and free,” he said.
According to Perez Roque, U. S. preparations for a change of government on the island are contained in a highly detailed transition document that includes provisions for what he called a shadow Cuban administration, ready to take over after a change of leadership. He said the document anticipates almost every conceivable eventuality that might follow a change of power, including the possible need for a special adoption agency that could swing into action if large numbers of Cuban children were orphaned by armed conflict.
Perez Roque appeared to be referring to a 458- page plan prepared by the U. S. government’s Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, a remarkable document submitted to the White House in May 2004 by former secretary of state Colin Powell.
It includes sections on “ Hastening Cuba’s Transition,” “ Meeting Basic Human Needs,” “ Rule of Law” and “ Establishing the Core Institutions of a Free Economy.”
“ It is a strategy that says we’re not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom; we are working for the day of Cuban freedom,” President George W. Bush said at the time.
In Perez Roque’s view, the document “ is a plan for the re- colonization of Cuba.” On a different front, the Cuban minister denounced the continued incarceration on U. S. soil of five men — known as the Cuba Five — imprisoned in 1998 and convicted in 2001 of spying in the United States on behalf of Cuba. At the same time, he defended his government’s incarceration two years ago of more than 70 peaceful Cuban dissidents, now serving woefully long sentences.
In August, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered new trials for the five Cuban men, ruling that their original convictions were tainted because the trials had been held in Miami, a city dominated by antiCastro militants. No date has been set for the new trials, and the men remain behind bars.
“ We say that they should be freed immediately and unconditionally,” said Perez Roque. “ Right now, they are technically being kidnapped.” Havana has long championed the five, insisting they posed no threat to U. S. national security.
Instead, say Cuban authorities, the men were keeping watch over anti- Castro groups in Florida, several of which have been responsible for past violent acts.
“ They never carried out espionage against the United States,” Perez Roque said.
Meanwhile, he ruled out any reconsideration of the cases of the Cuban dissidents who remain imprisoned in his country despite bitter international protest.
Regarding commercial relations with Canada, Perez Roque said Canadian exports to his country would increase dramatically — to “ more than $ 1 billion ( U. S.) per year, including more than $400 million in agricultural products” — if Ottawa provided credit guarantees to businesses interested in trading with Cuba, as many other governments routinely do.
According to Statistics Canada, Canadian companies sold $327 million worth of goods and services to Cuba last year, while Canada’s imports from the island totalled $590 million.
While in Canada, the minister met jazz artist Jane Bunnett, who celebrates Cuban music and musicians on her CDs, and managed to catch the end of a Toronto-Ottawa hockey game on TV, eventually won in a shootout by the Senators. A diplomat by training and inclination, Perez Roque said he rooted for the “ Canadian” side.