Cuba needs a regime change

Fidel Castro's recent wave of murderous repression against peaceful dissidents has again exposed him for what he has always been -- a brutal dictator. It has also debunked the lie that economic engagement and a ''more-moderate'' political line can help reform Cuba's Stalinist system.

It's now painfully obvious that a decade of European engagement with, and coddling of, the Cuban dictator has failed miserably. For many, it's time to play hardball with him.

While some unapologetic Castro supporters (most re cently U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa) continue to push for normalization with the totalitarian Cuban regime, Castro's terror tactics have finally forced other engagement proponents out of business.

Last Wednesday the entire board of the Cuba Policy Foundation, an influential bipartisan Washington group that has long fought to soften U.S. policy toward Cuba resigned and closed up shop, admitting that Castro's actions have made their efforts ''hopeless.'' Other similarly misguided groups should follow suit.

Thankfully international condemnation of Castro has increased. Some advocate punishing him and demonstrating disapproval of his behavior. But the time for talk and punishment has long passed.

If we can forcibly remove Saddam Hussein, depose Haiti's military dictator, dislodge the Serbian tyrant and peacefully force from power other strongmen such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, why should the despotic, terror-sponsoring Castro remain immune? He shouldn't.

Continuing the 44-year-old status quo is unacceptable. We should now focus on regime change in Cuba. The sooner we let the Cuban people know we're serious, the better.

This does not have to mean the same thing it meant in Iraq; we don't need (nor want) to send in the Marines, but U.S. officials are considering several other assertive policy options to deal with Castro. His criminal actions have made the need for their implementation more urgent.

President Bush should model his approach on Ronald Reagan's successful strategic effort to peacefully bring down the Soviet Empire. Reagan combined strong diplomatic, economic, military and political pressure on the Soviets with aggressive support for democracy activists and dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. The Soviet Union imploded, and the Berlin Wall crumbled shortly thereafter.

While there is debate about specific policy proposals, most experts agree that increasing economic pressure on the Castro regime is crucial. As European trade, tourism and investment have dried up, Castro has been furiously lobbying for a lifting of U.S. sanctions to save his dying regime.

With this effort stalled, Castro has run out of economic options. His foreign debt has doubled since the early 1990s, and he may have finally run out of cash. With his European friends unwilling to help him now, his regime is far more fragile than many realize.

Restricting or suspending all American travel and nearly $1 billion in annual remittances from Cuban Americans to Cuba is one approach. Strictly enforcing existing embargo rules is another. But tougher unilateral economic sanctions are not enough. We should strive for multilateral sanctions and diplomatic isolation similar to that used against the apartheid regime in South Africa. The time is right for international action.

While limiting financial support for the regime, we must continue actively supporting pro-democracy efforts on the island. The U.S. Agency for International Development, though, may not be the best vehicle for this effort; other means should also be considered. It's critical to increase information flow to Cuba. TV and Radio Martí should get substantial increases in funding and power. As was the case in the former Soviet bloc, seeing and hearing the truth is pivotal to promote civic opposition within closed regimes.

Finally, Castro cannot be permitted to use mass migration as a tool or weapon. This must be made clear.

Castro should be put on notice that his days in power are numbered. This is the best way to support the bloodied Cuban opposition and rapidly bring democracy to the island.

Cuban operates a sophisticated intelligence program against the U.S. One of its highly placed agents, Ana Belen Montes, worked at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency before her arrest and conviction of espionage in October 2002.

Sept. 29, 2001, 11:53PM/ Analyst at Pentagon arrested on charges of spying for Havana / FBI says espionage goes back 5 years By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS / New York Times - [Full Text] WASHINGTON -- A few days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, Ana Belen Montes, a top Defense Department intelligence analyst, sent an e-mail note to an old friend saying she was all right and had not known anyone who died at the Pentagon.

"I could see the Pentagon burning from my office," she wrote. "Nonetheless, it pales next to the World Trade Center. Dark days ahead. So much hate and self-righteousness."

The days darkened especially quickly for Montes. A week after she signed off, sending love to her friend's family, federal agents surprised her at work and charged her with spying for Cuba. She is the highest-ranking official ever accused of espionage at the Defense Intelligence Agency, which, as a sister agency to the CIA, handles analysis for the Pentagon.

The arrest, on Sept. 21, left her friends and colleagues at a loss to explain what might have motivated her to risk everything, should the charges prove true. Friends described Montes, who is 44 and single, as a loyal companion, doting aunt, and an avid traveler. She had no evident money problems, and was apparently content dating a man who either was in the military or did business at the Pentagon, they said.

She was warm and funny, friends said, and seemed apolitical, even back in college. Her remark about "self-righteousness" was as ideologically pointed as she had ever been, said Lisa Huber, who had attended the University of Virginia with Montes and received the e-mail message.

"I can't picture her being involved in something like this," said Huber, a Louisville, Ky., resident who has seen Montes at least twice a year since their college days. "It goes against everything I know about her. She has a lot of integrity."

Montes, who had been the DIA's top intelligence analyst for Cuba since 1992, left a different impression among colleagues. She came off as rather severe, they said; at meetings, she sat rigidly in her chair and rarely spoke. Some associates viewed her as struggling to advance in a culture dominated by men.

"She was a very strange person, very standoffish, extraordinarily shy," said a U.S. diplomat.

But professionally, Montes seemed above reproach. She spoke fluent Spanish because of her Puerto Rican heritage, and in 1990 she was tapped to brief Nicaragua's new president, Violeta Chamorro, about the Cuban-backed Sandinista military.

In 1992 or 1993, she pulled off what seemed to be an intelligence coup. She traveled to Cuba and interviewed Cuban generals about economic reforms on the island. In 1998, she played an important role in drafting a widely cited analysis that found that Cuba's much diminished military posed no strategic threat to the United States. As recently as the week before last, she briefed top Pentagon policy-makers on Cuba.

According to the FBI affidavit, Montes, who had a high-level security clearance, spied for Cuba for at least five years, and possibly longer. She identified at least one U.S. undercover agent to the Cubans, disclosed a top-secret intelligence-gathering program and reported on U.S. training in the Caribbean, the FBI said.

Current and former U.S. officials say she was in a position to tell have told Havana virtually everything the intelligence community knew about Cuba's military and might even have disclosed U.S. contingency plans for taking the island by force.

"I would think, if damage was done, it would be about what she learned about the U.S., how it was militarily prepared vis-a-vis Cuba," said Richard Nuccio, who was President Bill Clinton's special adviser on Cuba. [End]

Willful blindness shattered by Cuba's crackdown - Castro shows the brutal face of his regime***The wilful blindness to President Castro's repression has been underlined by the shock at the recent crackdown. The Pope, who insisted on his controversial visit to Havana five years ago that he had won significant human rights concessions, spoke of his "deep sorrow" at the executions and urged Señor Castro to consider a "significant gesture of clemency" toward those convicted. Perhaps the biggest shock was felt by the writers, poets and artists who have long defended Cuba and its autocratic ruler. The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes called the country "a suffocating dictatorship", the Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago said Fidel Castro "cheated his enemies" and the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, who once praised him as a "symbol of national dignity", acknowledged that the crackdown had fuelled opposition claims that he was a dictator. There have been demonstrations in Caracas and Madrid.***

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