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To: Hi Heels

Maybe someone who knows a lot about Guantanamo Bay can answer me this... Are we actually leasing this naval base from Cuba? If so, how much longer is the lease?


42 posted on 08/17/2007 5:13:50 PM PDT by John123 ("What good fortune for the governments that the people do not think" -- Adolf Hitler)
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To: John123

From wikipedia (of course, not always the most reliable internet source):

By the war’s end, the U.S. government had obtained control of all of Cuba from Spain. A perpetual lease for the area around Guantánamo Bay was offered February 23, 1903, from Tomás Estrada Palma, an American citizen, who became the first President of Cuba. The Cuban-American Treaty gave, among other things, the Republic of Cuba ultimate sovereignty over Guantánamo Bay while granting the United States “complete jurisdiction and control” of the area for coaling and naval stations.

A 1934 treaty reaffirming the lease granted Cuba and her trading partners free access through the bay, modified the lease payment from $2,000 in U.S. gold coins per year, to the 1934 equivalent value of $4,085 in U.S. dollars, and made the lease permanent unless both governments agreed to break it or the U.S. abandoned the base property.


44 posted on 08/17/2007 5:25:33 PM PDT by samson1097
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