The biotechnology used to manufacture three lifesaving medical products -- and which could be used to produce biochemical weapons -- has been sold to Iran, one of seven nations on the State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism, the scientist said, calling the sale ``profoundly disturbing.''
José de la Fuente, the former director of research and development at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) in Havana, made the disclosure in this month's issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology. [End Excerpt]
(Oct. 7, 2001) Terrorism war to force Cuba, Venezuela to sit tight awhile [Excerpt] The Bush administration is too busy trying to chase suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in Afghanistan and the Middle East to spend much time thinking about terrorist links in Latin America, many of those interviewed said.
In addition, the United States will avoid raising Cuba's open support for armed movements in the past, or its most recent role as a sort of Club Med for international terrorists, for fear of bringing up potentially divisive issues that could annoy some members of the U.S.-sponsored anti-terrorist coalition, others said.
But U.S. officials say the Bush administration will most likely keep Cuba on the U.S. list of ``terrorist states'' because it provides safe haven to Basque ETA terrorists, members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and other insurgent groups and keeps close ties with radical Arab organizations.
If anything, the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the United States will effectively kill U.S. congressional moves to ease the U.S. embargo on the Castro regime.
A recent effort by some U.S. congress members to lift a U.S. travel ban on the island is doomed, because Congress is highly unlikely to vote for a measure that could provide economic relief to a country tied to terrorism, officials say.
Recent press reports that the Bush administration held unusual contacts with Cuba as part of its efforts to gather information on the Sept. 11 attack on the United States are ``Cuban misinformation,'' one U.S. official told me.
The United States did not make a special outreach effort to Cuba, nor did it get anything from Fidel Castro's regime, he said.
As for Venezuela, the conventional wisdom in U.S. diplomatic circles is that the Bush administration will try to avoid a confrontation with the oil-rich country unless confronted with evidence of a terrorist link.
But Cuba and Venezuela will have to sit tight for the foreseeable future. The mood in Washington -- and Europe -- has changed dramatically since Sept. 11, and whatever patience there was for presidents who keep ties with violent groups around the world has evaporated.
``The margin of U.S. tolerance for countries that flirt with terrorists and terrorist regimes is much lower,'' says Bernard Aronson, a former head of the U.S. State Department's Latin American affairs office who is close to the Bush administration.
``I don't think the United States will go after Cuba and Venezuela, because we have bigger fish to fry. But the willingness to ignore flirting with violent organizations has gone down significantly, and countries that want to have friendly relations with the United States will need to take that into account.''
It may be no coincidence that Cuban strongman Castro rushed to condemn the terrorist attack, and last week signed 12 U.N. treaties aimed at fighting terrorism.
Or that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez signed a strong Organization of American States resolution backing the U.S. war on terrorism, and rushed to say that Venezuela will guarantee oil supplies to the U.S. market. [End Excerpt]
Troubling, too, are the regime's 40-year ties with the Middle East that include relations with fellow members of the terror blacklist: Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Sudan. The friendships are no accident. As recently as this year, Fidel Castro saw fit to renew those relationships personally in a Mideast tour.
The importance of those relations was reflected in the rushed arrest of Ana Belén Montes, the Defense Intelligence Agency analyst accused of passing classified information to the communist country. The concern was that secrets passed to Cuba would be shared with unfriendly Mideast states, compromising U.S. anti-terror efforts. [End Excerpt]
Fidel Castro's Deadly Secret - Five BioChem Warfare Labs--[Excerpt] Not far from Havana's picturesque harbor, where ogling tourists and curvaceous prostitutes ply Cuba's only thriving form of free trade, stands the Luis Diaz Soto Naval Hospital, flanked by a newly built concrete laboratory complex about 400 feet long by 300 feet wide.
Inside the compound, along a 165-foot acid-resistant work table with built-in circuit breakers, military biotechnicians reportedly experiment on cadavers, hospital patients and live animals with anthrax, brucellosis, equine encephalitis, dengue fever, hepatitis, tetanus and a variety of other bacterial agents.
Five chemical- and biological-weapons plants operate throughout the island, according to documents smuggled out of Cuba and made available to Insight by Alvaro Prendes, a former Cuban air force colonel who now is the Miami-based spokesman for the Union of Liberated Soldiers and Officers, a clandestine pro-democracy movement within Cuba's security services.
The credibility of the smuggled documents is enhanced by a recent classified Pentagon analysis. Also, these facilities have not been on the itinerary of such visiting dignitaries as retired Marine Gen. John Sheehan, the recently passed-over candidate for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who enthusiastically embraced normalizing relations with Havana following a recent round of junketing with Castro. [End Excerpt]