Should Cuba Be on U.S. Terrorism Blacklist?

HAVANA/MIAMI (Reuters) - The Cold War is long over, and it has been years since Cuban President Fidel Castro sent men and arms abroad to foment revolution, but Washington still officially labels communist-run Cuba a sponsor of terrorism.

With that tag even more unwelcome since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and the new global war on terrorism, debate has sprung up over the fairness of keeping Cuba on the State Department's seven-nation blacklist.

``In this new world context dominated by the struggle against terrorism, Cuba clearly will not be an unquestioning ally, but it need not be an enemy,'' according to a recent statement by a group of 16 U.S.- based organizations and personalities, who argued against Cuba's inclusion on the list.

For the most radical U.S.-based, anti-Castro group, the Cuban American National Foundation, however, Cuba amply qualifies as a terrorist state ``in every sense of the word.''

The State Department's last annual review of alleged state- sponsored terrorism, in April, gave three main reasons for putting Cuba alongside six other alleged ``rogue'' nations -- Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria:

+ ``A number of Basque ETA terrorists who gained sanctuary in Cuba some years ago continued to live on the island;''

+ And Havana has ties with Colombia's two main guerrilla movements, which have ``a permanent presence on the island.''

Cuba and those opposing its place on the U.S. list say those arguments are flawed and it's a big leap from giving asylum to actively instigating terrorism.

``If this is all the State Department can come up with, Cuba should be removed from the list of rogue states immediately,'' said Wayne Smith, a U.S. expert on Cuba who used to head Washington's diplomatic mission in Havana.

Smith and others opposed to having Cuba on the list point out the ETA guerrillas came to Cuba in an agreement with Spain, which would rather have them out of the country. The guerrillas are not involved in activities against Spain, they argued.

Regarding the U.S. fugitives in Cuba, such as ex-Black Panther members, they are politically inactive on the island, and the United States equally is home to numerous people Havana accuses of acts of terrorism against it, opponents of the Cuba policy said.

Finally, contacts with the Colombian rebels should ``merit applause'' not condemnation, Smith said, because Cuba, along with various others including the United States, is in contact with the rebels to facilitate peace talks with the government.

The real reason for Cuba's inclusion on the list, Smith said, is the political muscle of the anti-Castro Cuban American community in Florida.

``It has often been said that while there are no convincing reasons to keep Cuba on the list of terrorist states, it is best left on since removing it would offend elements of the Cuban American community,'' said the open letter signed by the 16 U.S. groups involved in Cuba issues, including some moderate Cuban American organizations.

Sally Grooms Cowal, president of the U.S.-based Cuba Policy Foundation, a centrist organization that opposes the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, said the United States now has a self-defense incentive to ease its hard-line policy toward Havana and remove it from the list of rogue states.

NEW CONSIDERATIONS ``We have a big hole in our defense perimeter and that hole is Cuba,'' she said. ``I think we would be safer if we proceeded along those lines.''

For the Cuban American National Foundation and Castro's other die-hard foes, however, he has been a ``terrorist'' since the early days of the revolution when hundreds of opponents were executed and Cubans fanned out across Latin America to spread revolution.

``In the entire history of the Castro regime they have actively supported terrorist groups throughout the world,'' said Dennis Hays, executive vice president of the foundation.

Hays also cited Castro's recent ``terror tour'' to Iran and Libya as evidence Havana maintains close ties to other ''terrorist'' states. ``From every way you look at it, Cuba continues to actively support violent terrorist groups.''

Hays said if Cuba is serious about not being a terrorist state, it would have to sever all ties to alleged terrorist nations and groups, extradite criminals, shut down intelligence operations and open up its biotechnology industry to world scrutiny to check its capacity to produce biological weapons.

Cuba's Foreign Ministry declined an interview request on the subject, but Castro has been vociferously making Havana's case since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

He has condemned terrorism outright, offered both condolences and medical aid to the U.S. victims, pledged Cuba will never be used for terrorism against the United States and signed all 12 international anti-terrorism treaties.

Castro also has sought to turn attention to Cuba's case that it has been a victim of terrorism -- with U.S. complicity -- over the four decades since Castro's revolution.

A massive rally is planned in Havana's Revolution Square this weekend for the 25th anniversary of the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane which killed 73 passengers. That, says Havana, is just one of numerous violent assaults against Cuba backed by Cuban Americans and the CIA over the years.

Sally Grooms Cowal, president of the U.S.-based Cuba Policy Foundation, a centrist organization that opposes the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, said the United States now has a self-defense incentive to ease its hard-line policy toward Havana and remove it from the list of rogue states.

********Centrist? Hardly! *********

(April 22, 2001) HOUSTON (AP) - The former diplomat who housed Elian Gonzalez for the final five weeks of his stay in the United States announced the formation of a group Thursday to promote an end to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

Sally Grooms Cowal said her Cuba Policy Foundation believes resumption of trade is the best way to foster reforms on the communist-ruled island.

``The only chance we really have to grow this American economy is growth in our exports and growth in our markets,'' Cowal said.

Cowal served in various diplomatic posts from 1971 through 1994, including as ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago. She also was president of Youth for Understanding, an organization that promotes exchanges involving high school students from the United States and foreign countries. Elian and his father stayed at the organization's estate in Washington before they returned to Cuba.

The boy was the victim of a shipwreck off the Florida coast during a crossing from Cuba that claimed the life of his mother in November 1999. He was rescued and spent five months with relatives in Miami before federal agents seized him in a gunpoint raid in April 2000 and delivered him to his father.

The United States has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba for 40 years. Last year Congress approved a measure loosening the embargo for sales of U.S. agricultural products and medicines.

___________________________________________________________________________

Excerpt: Their new home is a tidy yellow clapboard house owned by the Youth for Understanding International Exchange, on rolling grounds with a view of the National Cathedral. A single police car and occasional camera crews sat outside the home yesterday afternoon, surely just a fraction of the disruption that the neighborhood will experience once the famous child arrives.

While some Cleveland Park residents are worried about the media and security entourage that has followed the boy on his American journey, it is not their style to be too impressed.

"I live next door to the secretary of the Air Force, and we have Marian Wright Edelman and Judith Viorst down the street," said resident Laine Kaufman, referring, respectively, to the child advocate and the writer. "And of course we have Gregory Craig."

That would be the attorney who represented President Clinton in his impeachment hearings and now is working for Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.

Most interviewed said Elian and his family would love it here.

"It's a real community. People walk around. They sit on their front porches," said Kaufman, who was taking her two little boys and a playmate for frozen treats.

"It's a neighborhood of children and dogs," said Pam Korbel, walking one of the latter. "It's very friendly. If something happens, you have a meal on your doorstep. It's a village.

"My son had his first cigarette under that magnolia tree," she said, pointing toward the Youth for Understanding grounds, "and four neighbors called to tell me, before he even got home." [End Excerpt] ---[Sounds like Castro's neighborhood spies]

( UNDER THE GUISE OF RELIGION, NCC, UMC, PASTORS FOR PEACE)-- Another one of the most militant, fanatic and violent "religious" and "humanitarian" organizations part of this network in the U.S. appearing to be working for Castro's tyranny are the "interreligious" group Pastors for Peace. These "pastors" as well as the NCC have received grants from the ARCA FOUNDATION, which according to scholar Irving Louis Horowitz, is a "highly pro-Castro and partisan," grant-giving agency. From 1994 to1998, ARCA awarded about $3 million for pro-Castro projects.

________________________________________________________________

U.S. Embargo-Busters Aim to Import Cuba Rat Poison--- Pushed by Pastor of Peace

_______________________________________________________________________

Foreign Investment In Cuba.com--[Excerpt]-- The Cuba Policy Foundation, founded by several former State Department officials and academic and business leaders, will open a Washington office soon, according to its president, Sally Grooms Cowal. --(former president of Youth for Understanding that housed Elian in Washington D.C. before he was sent back to Cuba.)

``There's a real need for a new centrist group, not left-leaning activists, and not just business interests,'' said Cowal, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs under President George Bush in the late 1980s. She also served as ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago.

`NON-IDEOLOGICAL'

Cowal described the new group as ``non-ideological,'' devoted to examining all aspects of Cuba policy, and challenging the embargo as a failure that ``has hurt America's own economic and national interests.''

Cowal's group received its initial funding from the ARCA FOUNDATION, a wealthy organization devoted to more contact and fewer trade restrictions with Cuba. Its chairman is SMITH BAGLEY, a grandson of tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds and a major Democratic donor. ******(Remember the two DNC fundraisers with Elian as their trophy?)*******

A leader of another group challenging Cuba policy, former Sen. Dennis DeConcini, said the new organization, with its financial backing, could become a Washington player on Cuba issues.

``A group like this tells me there really is support for changing our policy,'' DeConcini said. -[End Excerpt]

_______________________________________________________________________

(Orlando Sentinel- October 4, 2001) --Open your eyes - Cuba belongs on list-- The fact that Castro has harbored, and still harbors, individuals who have committed acts of terrorism in this country is irrelevant. Rep. Maxine Waters and others may romanticize them as " '60s radicals," but they committed despicable acts just the same.

___________________________________________________________________________

I'll venture a guess that everyone of these current 57 CONGRESSIONAL MEMBERS of the Progressive Caucus have made a pilgrimage to Havana.

________________________________________________________________________

(September 21, 2001)--Pentagon Analyst Accused of spying for Cuba--Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla, said Cuba shares intelligence information with terrorist states. ``It was critically important that the spy be stopped now as the United States embarks upon a worldwide war against terrorism,'' he said.

____________________________________________________________________

Castro also has sought to turn attention to Cuba's case that it has been a victim of terrorism -- with U.S. complicity -- over the four decades since Castro's revolution.

I guess Castro's eager urging for the Soviet Union to lob a few missiles on the U.S. from Cuba was just a lapse of judgment.

***Don't subsidize a tyrant

It's Cool Again to Be Communist [Exceprt] -- "Many of the international communist-front organizations are continuing to operate, but they now are hiding behind one level of cover - groups that are in the antiglobalism coalition," a veteran U.S. intelligence officer explains. "A lot of funding has come from the Communist Party of India. The North Korean Communist Party has taken over some coordination in recent years." Some analysts hypothesize that the People's Republic of China might be trying to jump-start the machinery of the old Soviet front groups, using North Korea as a "funding cutout." But the fronts have changed their terminology: Marxist-Leninist rhetoric is gone, replaced by antiglobalism themes. "It doesn't arouse the concern of Western governments or get stereotyped as being antidemocratic," says a longtime observer. "Though there is a considerable organizational structure behind the antiglobalist movement, it isn't totally coordinated. Much is spontaneous." Spaulding notes, "These rallies have been organized by a combination of Marxists, anarchists, ecologists, feminists and gay-rights activists. And nobody has been able to get control." [End Excerpt]

Delighting in the Dictator [Excerpt]--- In the late 1970s the American writer Sally Quinn returned from Cuba having found it an Isle of Eros. Said she of the country that then housed thousands of political prisoners in dirty cells and torture chambers, "an attitude of sexuality is as pervasive in Cuba as the presence of Fidel Castro. You can feel sex in the atmosphere." Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern bounced around the Cuban countryside with Fidel in a jeep and survived to tell of it. Said he of a man who even then was sending arms and soldiers around the world to support Communist terror and oppose American policy, Fidel is "soft-spoken, shy, sensitive, sometimes witty….I frankly, liked him." And Senator Lowell Weicker, the Republican ever on the prowl for a presidential nomination, launched this line certain to illuminate his presidential qualifications. "Castro's been known to snow people but he didn't snow me," Weicker asseverated. He spoke of Fidel's "enormous intellect and idealism" -- yes, idealism! He questioned why the United States did not take Fidel's side, the side of progress. [End Excerpt]

(June 13, 2001-Miami Herald) Secret arms shipments from China to Cuba reported U.S. won't confirm allegations, which cite intelligence officials

Castro is no better than Ossama.

BUMP!

(July 1996) Labiofam is headed by Antonio Fraga Castro, reportedly a nephew of President Fidel Castro. and more interesting things: [Excerpt]

Vesco, who has been living in Cuba since 1982, was arrested at his Havana home in May 1995. He has been charged in the United States with stealing some $224 million from an international mutual fund and with cocaine trafficking. He fled the United States in 1973 and is said to have lived in the Bahamas and Costa Rica before arriving in Cuba.

The 20-page charge sheet against Vesco accuses him of a series of irregularities in seeking to develop the drug called ``TX,'' which was supposed to help boost the body's immune system against an array of diseases from cancer to AIDS, according to sources familiar with the case.

Vesco proposed a study of the drug to the Health Ministry, which authorized the research, the charge sheet said. But Vesco, who was not supposed to engage in business as a condition of obtaining residence, sought foreign investors in the project, persuading them he had official approval.

He pocketed most of the funds and formed a company to market the drug without registering it in Cuba, the charge sheet said. Although the Health Ministry suspended research in December 1994, it said, Vesco obtained a contract with state pharmaceuticals firm Labiofam S.A. for research and concealed from Labiofam his dealings with foreign investors.

Also facing trial is Vesco's wife Lidia Alfonso, a Cuban whom he married while in detention. She faces similar charges but the prosecution is asking for a 10-year jail term for her.

Labiofam is one of the several state firms involved in developing a pharmaceutical industry that Cuba hopes will be a key foreign currency earner. Labiofam is headed by Antonio Fraga Castro, reportedly a nephew of President Fidel Castro.

Sources close to the case have said Vesco was denounced by his foreign business partners, leading to the investigation.

The Foreign Ministry said in June of last year that Vesco was being investigated on suspicion of being an ``agent for foreign special services.''

Sources close to the case said this month that Vesco had refused consular visits from U.S. officials since his arrest but had been visited several times by Italian embassy officials. They said Vesco was moved from jail to custody in a Havana hospital last December because of a medical problem. [End Excerpt]

___________________________________________________________________

Radio Havana Cuba--(Aug. 25, 2000) *LABIOFAM PHARMACEUTICAL LABORATORY A TARGET OF US ATTACKS--[Excerpt] Havana, August 25 (RHC)-- The President of Cuba's LABIOFAM pharmaceutical laboratory, Jose Antonio Fraga, has denounced pressures exerted by U.S. transnationals based in Guatemala as the cause of the cancellation of the licensing of Biorat, a Cuban product proven effective as a biological rat exterminator in various countries. [End Excerpt]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.