[Cincinatus' Wife]

Cuba's crackdown and America's man in Havana *** Cuban officials became anxious as Mr Cason travelled to meet dissidents in their homes and invited them to his official residence. Mr Castro was piqued when Mr Cason - speaking outside the home of Marta Beatriz Roque, a now-imprisoned dissident - said Cuba was growing fearful of internal opposition. Two weeks later a defiant Mr Castro told the National Assembly that Cuba could "very easily do without the US interests section office". The offensive soon followed. William Leogrande, Dean of the School of Public Affairs at Washington DC's American University, called Mr Cason's "very public stand" the "catalyst" for the crackdown. "The dissidents were not well-served by Cason's very public embrace," he said. "It was as if he were throwing the gauntlet down to the Cuban regime."

Ties between the US interest section and the dissidents were used as trial evidence, as was the testimony of several Cuban security agents who infiltrated the movement. State-run media then published this testimony to discredit the dissidents as mercenaries bankrolled by the US. While Mr Cason has expressed no regret for his activities, he has curtailed his public engagements while he and other officials reassess how best to support dissidents without jeopardising them. Mr Leogrande noted that remaining dissidents have developed "some effective models of resistance. The Castro regime has no hope of restoring the ideology of the 1970s and 1980s so, just as in eastern Europe, time is on the dissidents' side."

But for now the arrests have thrown the dissident movement into a tailspin. Even when the Castro government was relatively permissive of dissident organising, few Cubans knew about their efforts or got involved. Recruitment is certain to be more difficult now that the movement has been criminalised, deeply infiltrated by state agents, and proved so easily dismantled. Vladimiro Roca, a leading Havana dissident and former political prisoner who has so far been spared in the crackdown, said: "Yes, some people may be afraid to join us and we have to rebuild. But what the government has done only reminds us that the future belongs to the dissidents, and that gives us strength. "The government says that we are insignificant groups, that we are 'minuscule'," Mr Roca said. "But what sort of hunter shoots a sparrow with a cannon?"***

[george wythe]

Libya is the chair of the UN Human Rights commision:

The United Nations Human Rights Commission has begun it annual session in Geneva amid controversy as a pressure group was barred from participating for staging a protest against Libya's chairing of the meeting.

The group - Reporters Without Borders (RSF) - was suspended for showering the meeting with leaflets criticising Libya's record on human right

In a statement, RSF said that Libya's heading of the commission was a "sick joke" that called into question the forum's credibility.

RSF said its protest was aimed to highlight what the group said was Libya's gross violations of human rights, including disappearances, torture and arbitrary arrests.

"At last the UN has appointed someone who knows what she's talking about," RSF said in the leaflets, referring to Ms al-Hajjaji, Lybia's ambassador.

"What credibility can such a body have when led by the representative of a country where human rights are abused every day, " the group said.