El Tumbao Cubano - El Blog de Cuba en el Exilio

Cuba, previously a 'threat,' drops from radar

Two years ago, John Bolton widely publicized a State Department report alleging that Cuba was developing a biological warfare program.

By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent. Published September 6, 2005.
MIAMI - A week ago, the State Department quietly reinterpreted its intelligence assessment on the bioweapons threat posed by Cuba.

It makes for interesting reading.

Readers may recall that two years ago the State Department alleged that Cuba had "at least a limited, developmental offensive biological warfare research and development effort."

The report was widely publicized by critics of the Cuban government, including John Bolton, who at the time was undersecretary for arms control and international security.

Bolton was recently tapped as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Congress was unable to agree on his nomination after Bolton was criticized during testy hearings for allegedly using his political influence to bully intelligence officials.

The Bush administration appointed him anyway...

LINK

US does volte face on Cuba’s bioweapons capability

LINK   FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 02, 2005 12:15:10 AM

WASHINGTON: The Bush administration backed away from claims that Cuba has an offensive biological weapons effort, acknowledging in a report to Congress that “there is a split view” among intelligence analysts on the question. The report says instead that Cuba has the “technical capability” to pursue biological weapons research & development because of its advanced pharmaceutical industry. But it leaves open the critical question of whether it has done so....

What the future may hold for Cuba after Castro

June 12, 2005.  BY TODD LEWAN.  AP
MIAMI -- On this side of the Puddle, as the sunlit sea between Florida and Cuba is known to some Cuban exiles here, the biggest news splash in quite some time was the fall of Fidel Castro.

It happened last October -- although clearly, it was not the sort of fall for which Castro's enemies have long hoped. Fidel simply fell while descending a stage in Santa Clara, where he had just given one of his gargantuan public addresses. With his bodyguards looking on, Castro went into a forward plunge that left the Cuban leader with a broken left knee and a hairline fracture to his upper right arm.

Helped to a folding chair, the 78-year-old president tried to make light of his spill. ''As you can see,'' Castro told television viewers, ''I can still talk.''

On this side of the Puddle, talk of the fall was anything but light.

If nothing else, Castro's misstep and the flood of media coverage that followed it had Cuban Americans of all ages, incomes, ethnicities and political stripes thinking long and hard about two undeniable facts.

*Fidel -- maker of revolution, torturer of 10 U.S. presidents, indomitable icon of the communist world -- is old, and getting older.

*Someday, Fidel's Island will be Fidel-less -- which, as it happens, is worrisome not only to Cubans who have remained on the island, but to many of their U.S.-based compatriots.

Military has tight grip.
Who, or what, exiles wonder, will be arriving with the dawn? And just how will the 11.2 million newly liberated Cubans -- if, indeed, they turn out to be truly ''liberated'' -- treat those among the 2 million or so Cuban exiles around the world who choose to return?=

It is this haziness about what comes next that makes Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, so sought after these days.

Suchlicki runs the ''Cuban Transitional Project.'' He oversees the collection, sifting and analyzing of data on Cuba, so recommendations can be made on how Cuba might be rehabbed once Fidel is no more.

Suchlicki gets calls not only from think-tank types, but also from Cuban-American entrepreneurs and multinational conglomerates -- IBM, McDonald's, Texaco, Anheuser-Busch -- which are concocting ''entrance strategy'' plans.

But Suchlicki says American firms may have to wait a while -- five to 10 years after Castro's death.

''Cuba isn't going to open up the way Eastern Europe did,'' he says. ''I think Cuba will probably act more like China, only with a lot less economic freedom. In the beginning, anyway.''

Why? ''The military.
The armed forces are running 65 percent of the Cuban economy. Those guys are not going back to the barracks -- not unless they think they can make more money for themselves by wearing a suit and a tie.''

The fact that Cuba is, literally, an island unto itself and equipped with a sophisticated homeland security apparatus should make it easier for the country's generals to keep capitalism at sea for years, he says.

''Of course, in the end, it will depend on how they manage the economy. Sure, it's a disaster right now, but the Communists are helped by three factors: cheap Venezuelan oil, tourism, and remittances from Cuban exiles. I think they'll be able to muddle through for a good, long while.'' And to Cuban-Americans who dream about returning to Cuba to become president, Suchlicki has one bit of advice: ''Get a good suntan.''

Nowadays, he notes, Cuba is one-third white and two-thirds black and mulatto -- the reverse of what it was in 1959. ''I can't see mulattos in Cuba voting for a white, fat-cat Cuban-American.''

$80 billion, 15-20 years= There are those in Little Havana who say a tsunami of Miami exiles will wash over the Caribbean island upon Castro's death, leaving golden arches, freshly paved highways, spanking new hotels, and lots of smiles in their wake.

Antonio Jorge, a renowned guru of Cuban economics who teaches at Florida International University, says these rosy predictions are hokum. Studies, he says, show that fewer than 100,000 of the more than 1.2 million Cuban exiles in the United States will move back for good after Castro dies.

''You dread to think what it will take to bring Cuba back even to where it was in 1959,'' says Jorge, who in 1959 was Cuba's chief economist and undersecretary of the treasury. ''Castro has succeeded, quite well, I'm afraid, in developing underdevelopment.''

Just to rebuild the island's highways, bridges, phone networks, sewage and drainage systems -- not to mention airports, electric grids, ports -- ''we're talking about $80 billion and 15 to 20 years,'' he says.= And the longer Fidel remains in power, he says, the more things will deteriorate, and the higher the reconstruction price tag will go.

In south Florida, Cuban Americans operate more than 80,000 businesses, and some are expected to invest in a post-Castro Cuba. But without the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and big U.S. banks to finance big ventures, Jorge says, the reconstruction of Cuba will go nowhere fast.

President predicts Cuba will embrace democracy

LINK.   By Michael Fletcher and Glenn Kessler.  The Washington Post.  Published June 7, 2005.

FT. LAUDERDALE -- President Bush on Monday urged nations of the Western Hemisphere to strengthen their democracies by embracing free-market economies and cracking down on corruption, while pointedly predicting that Cuba will ultimately be swept up in the tide of liberty that has engulfed other countries in the hemisphere.

"Democracy is the rule rather than the exception among nations in the Americas," Bush told foreign ministers and diplomats from 34 countries gathered here for the general assembly of the Organization of American States. "Only one country in this hemisphere sits outside this society of democratic nations--and one day, the tide of freedom will reach Cuba's shores as well."

Bush's 13-minute speech also had words for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a close Castro ally who has become a hero in parts of Latin America by casting the United States as an imperialist power and who has stoked U.S. ire by nationalizing some businesses and stifling political dissent...

Stand up for people of Cuba, Rice tells Caribbean

LINK.    Andy Johnson Fort Lauderdale.  Tuesday, June 7th 2005.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday countries in the Caribbean which continued to deal with the government of Cuba need to take one thing into consideration.

"Think about the people of  Cuba," she said. "The Cuban people are among the only ones, anywhere in the world who do not have the opportunity to change their government. There are not many places in the world where that is not the case anymore," she said, adding that the people of Cuba have had to live in that kind of society for more than 45 years and that was too long now..

Exile to Reveal Plan For Post-Castro Cuba

Goal Is Indictment of Leader's Successor.
By Manuel Roig-Franzia. Washington Post Staff Writer. Tuesday, May 24, 2005.

MIAMI, May 23 -- Political intrigues don't come any more epically scaled than this one: the future of Cuba after the inevitable death of Fidel Castro, the world's longest-reigning head of state and an American government nemesis like few others.

The singular obsession that consumes the exile community here only grows more passionate as Castro, 78, ages. It tends to crescendo at the tiniest hint of vulnerability, such as the fall last year that broke his kneecap and arm, erupting in banner headlines and talk-radio vitriol in Miami. Castro has named his brother Raul, who is five years younger, to succeed him. But a Cuban exile daredevil who once flew missions over the island to drop human rights leaflets wants to get in the way.

Jose Basulto, president of Hermanos al Rescate, or Brothers to the Rescue, plans to announce Tuesday afternoon that he is offering $1 million for information leading to the indictment of Raul Castro on charges of drug trafficking and of murdering four Brothers to the Rescue pilots and passengers whose two small planes were shot down by Cuban MiG fighter planes off the island's coast in 1996.

The offer is intended to publicly pressure the U.S. government into resurrecting investigations of long-standing claims of criminal wrongdoing. But -- more important -- it also is intended to weaken Raul Castro and his allies politically and to complicate or even make illegal his succession.

"It would throw a wrench in the machinery," Basulto said of the hoped-for indictment....

Flow of funds to Cuba holds steady

The amount of money sent to Cubans by relatives in the United States has not changed a year after new restrictions were implemented, according to pollsters.

Herald.com Posted on Thu, May. 26, 2005 BY NANCY SAN MARTIN.  WASHINGTON.

Cubans living in the United States still send an estimated $460 million a year to relatives on the island despite restrictions tightened by the Bush administration last summer, according to a poll released by a Coral Gables firm Wednesday.

But a portion of the Cubans on the island who receive the cash transfers believe they are getting less money, according to a separate and less scientific survey conducted inside the island by a Washington-based think tank.

The assumption: That Fidel Castro's government is taking a bigger bite of the remittances, one of the key sources of income in an island where the economy was devastated by the 1990s collapse of Soviet subsidies.

''Now that it is clear to them how much money is arriving, [the Cuban government] is now getting a higher and higher percentage of that money,'' said pollster Sergio Bendixen of Bendixen & Associates.

The results of the Bendixen survey, presented during a forum at the think tank Inter-American Dialogue, indicate that 69 percent of respondents continue to send the same amount of money as before President Bush tightened restrictions on remittances to Cuba last June as part of a larger effort to keep U.S. dollars out of the government coffers and hasten a transition to democracy....

Art Deco Group Debating Whether to Hold World Congress in Cuba

Story             BY CASEY WOODS.
An international network of Art Deco design enthusiasts that has roots in Miami is grappling with another South Florida obsession: the bitter, seemingly endless, battle over how to deal with Cuba.

Members of the International Coalition of Art Deco Societies, a loose association of groups dedicated to preserving the streamlined architectural style, are locked in a battle over whether to hold the group's 2007 World Congress on Art Deco in the island nation.

Those who support the notion say that politics shouldn't thwart efforts to save the country's imperiled architecture. Others say it would be morally wrong to go and, for members from the United States, almost certainly illegal.

In recent weeks, the conflict has exploded into a hostile volley of e-mails -- one of which alleged that an ICADS member was accepting handouts from the Cuban government in exchange for striving to ''deliver'' the convocation. The accused member has threatened legal action in response.

The rancor has astonished members on both sides of the divide. Many wonder if their once-genteel organization, which has hundreds of members in countries as far away as New Zealand and Australia, is forever changed.

''It's been a mean two years, and I've never experienced anything like this in my 50 years doing volunteer work,'' said Rex Ball, the president of the Tulsa Art Deco Society, who has held the ICADS leadership post since 2003. ``Before, the organization was such a pleasant social comrades kind of thing, and I certainly hope this won't split it for good.''...

Bolton's Request to CIA Draws Further Review

Bolton's Request to CIA Draws Further Review

The New York Times.  SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2005 WASHINGTON
John Bolton's effort in 2002 to oust a top Central Intelligence Agency analyst from his post in a dispute over Cuba represented an extraordinary breach of the line between policy makers and intelligence, the agency's former deputy director has told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to a transcript of the exchange. The comments by the former official, John McLaughlin, in an interview with the committee's staff, go beyond previous criticisms by senior intelligence officials about Bolton's conduct in the episode. The analyst, Fulton Armstrong, was the national intelligence officer for Latin America and had clashed with Bolton's office about a speech that Armstrong thought overstated the Cuban threat.

`We are the termites' to Cuba's old regime

Washington boosts aid to groups backing internal opposition.

By Gary Marx. Tribune foreign correspondent. Published March 29, 2005.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Far from the White House and Havana, in strip malls and nondescript buildings along South Florida's sunlit streets, a multimillion-dollar infusion from the U.S. government has rejuvenated Cuban-American non-profit groups providing assistance to Cuba's tiny opposition movement.

The groups' ultimate goal, supported by the Bush administration, is to bring political change to Cuba and end the presidency of Fidel Castro, who has remained in power despite numerous assassination attempts and a four-decade U.S. trade embargo.

Some of what the groups send to the island doesn't reach the dissidents they hope to help, and some of the groups' leaders acknowledge that the extra $14 million the administration is sending their way this year--on top of the nearly $9 million that was appropriated--is unlikely to bring down the Cuban government.

But that hasn't dimmed their enthusiasm for aiding what they describe as courageous opposition figures, whom they view as Castro's Achilles' heel...