Castro's $250 Million "Charm offensive" hasn't worked: It's same old cruel *** In a desperate financial gamble, Castro recently raided the $250 million set aside to pay hard currency debt to European, Latin American, and Asian countries for essential imports. Instead, he used it to buy US farm products for cash. He was apparently calculating that he could persuade the US Congress to enact legislation freeing up additional exports to Cuba, and approving a flood of tourists to Cuba. The ploy hasn't worked. Nor, given the crackdown on dissenters, does the outlook look good for improving US-Cuban ties. President Bush is threatening new punitive measures.***
Fidel Castro's friends in Ottawa***Engagement with Cuba has been the official line in Ottawa for decades. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was famously chummy with the Cuban dictator, and left-wing Canadian politicos have been sucking up to Havana ever since -- mostly as a means to demonstrate Canada's moral superiority to the United States. Indeed, Canada indirectly helps prop up Cuba's government in a number of ways. From 1994 to 1999, the federal Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) provided $34-million in development assistance to Cuba. Last November, CIDA pledged $750,000 over six years toward a University of New Brunswick project to help Cuba create a biomedical engineering education program. Last October, CIDA made a three-year, $2.9-million commitment to a training program for Cuban workers run by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
Moreover, in the 2000-2001 fiscal year, Canadian taxpayers paid about $30-million to cover Canadian exports to Cuba that el jefe máximo could not or would not pay for. Canada has also granted Cuba what amounts to a $14-million line of credit to help pay for Canadian agricultural imports.As noted above, Mr. Chrétien justifies propping up Mr. Castro's dictatorship under the theory that "it's better to be engaged because that's putting pressure." But in this regard, we'd like to direct the Prime Minister's attention to a brilliant piece of historical analysis published by Cuba expert Ann Louise Bardach in last Sunday's New York Times. As Ms. Bardach shows, it is exactly at those junctures when Cuba was most "engaged" with the West that Mr. Castro -- fearing glasnost might undermine his authoritarian rule -- took deliberate steps to cement his rogue status.***