Now you don't talk so loud;
Now you don't seem so proud.....
Posted on 04/25/2002 2:02:03 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Cuba's dictator may think he outwitted Mexican President Vicente Fox by revealing a private conversation that gave fodder to Mr. Fox's critics. Instead, Fidel Castro defeated himself, sinking deeper into anachronism while President Fox forges the future of Latin America.
That future is a democratic hemisphere that respects human rights and free trade and enjoys mutually beneficial relations within the entire region, including the United States.
The conversation between the government leaders preceded last month's United Nations' summit in Monterrey, Mexico. Certainly President Fox wasn't the only head of state concerned that Castro might deflect attention from the summit's central issue, which was a new approach to helping the world's poorest nations -- putting into play billions more in aid.
As heard in the audio released by Castro, Mr. Fox didn't bar Castro from the summit. He diplomatically asked him to behave and to leave early, requests that Castro could have refused. Perhaps because he's so accustomed to playing a role in Mexico's politics, Castro found Mr. Fox's suggestions offensive. That response is understandable from a habitual meddler in other countries' affairs.
The Mexican government denied that it pressured Castro to leave early. It's a matter of interpretation, but one that Mr. Fox's political opponents have gleefully jumped on, claiming Fox caved in to the United States.
That isn't surprising. Mr. Fox defeated the Mexican political party that had a 71-year lock on power, and he doesn't have a majority in Congress. Political rivals naturally will jump on anything that might give their party an edge against Mr. Fox. Many of them are still aligned with the Cuban dictator, and -- we suspect -- many others are still trying to figure out why the anti-U.S., David-and-Goliath appeal of the repressive regime's leader has died out.
Short-term, Mr. Fox may be in an uncomfortable situation. His government's answer, which appeared on these pages yesterday, clearly and firmly rebuts the Cuban assertions. In light of their own government's hard reply, we can't imagine that Mexicans would stand for the kind of open manipulation of their politics that Castro is now attempting.
Long-term, an innovative immigration pact with the United States, free trade and the promotion of human rights will outshine a megalomaniac's petty antics.
The truth is that Castro is in a snit because Mexico endorsed the U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution that criticized the Cuban regime's appalling abuses. He's on a rampage against the Latin American nations that overwhelmingly supported the resolution. Uruguay, which introduced the measure, broke off relations with the regime, citing all the insults. Venezuela is the only ally that Castro has left in the region.
This has been a long time coming
Short-term, Mr. Fox may be in an uncomfortable situation. His government's answer, which appeared on these pages yesterday, clearly and firmly rebuts the Cuban assertions.
Fox put in a corner after his plea to Castro [Full Text] MEXICO CITY - Opposition lawmakers Tuesday demanded that President Vicente Fox explain himself to the nation a day after Cuban leader Fidel Castro released a secretly recorded telephone conversation in which the Mexican president asked him to make a hasty exit from the country. Castro embarrassed Fox Monday night by summoning foreign journalists to a news conference in Havana, where he released a taped conversation between the two leaders on March 19. In it, Fox tried to get Castro, who gave 24 hours' notice that he would join other world leaders at last month's United Nations development summit in Monterrey, to keep his visit short. Fox also asked Castro not to criticize the United States or President Bush.
Monday night, Castro accused Fox of caving in to U.S. pressure. The harsh words follow last Friday's vote at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, where Mexico was one of eight Latin American countries that supported a resolution calling for greater political and human rights in Cuba.
In news conferences and interviews last month, both Fox and Mexican Foreign Secretary Jorge Castañeda denied pressuring Castro. Pro-Cuba opposition legislators in Mexico tried for weeks to make Castañeda testify before congress about Castro's hasty, huffy exit from the conference. Now they want Fox to explain before congress or on national television. ''This demonstrates that President Fox lied to the Mexican people. How can we support a president who lies?'' said Congressman Sergio Acosta Salazar of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, the second-ranking member of the Foreign Relations Commission in the lower house of Mexico's National Congress.
For more than seven decades before Fox, Mexico was run by the left-leaning Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, in its Spanish initials), which grew out of the Mexican revolution of 1910-17. Acosta's leftist party splintered off from the PRI, and both parties are assailing the conservative Fox. Sen. Silvia Hernandez, a PRI leader and the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Commission, also called on Fox to explain himself. PRI governments stayed out of Cuba's domestic affairs, and in return Castro did not fund or support leftist revolutionaries in Mexico -- the country from which he launched his own rise to power -- as he did elsewhere in Latin America.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Fox administration began firing back. Foreign Secretary Castañeda denied that he or Fox had lied and said Castro was not pressured. What was asked of Castro, he said, was also asked of the United States: that both countries put aside their rivalries to avoid hijacking the development summit.
In a radio interview, Castañeda suggested that Castro feels threatened at home by his growing isolation in Latin America and by growing global support for universal principles of human rights. ''In effect the isolation of the government of Fidel Castro grows greater every day,'' Castañeda said. ``This resolution in Geneva came not from the Czechs but from Latin Americans.''
Throughout much of Castro's four-decade rule, the United States has sponsored U.N. resolutions condemning the lack of democratic rights in Cuba. In recent years, former communist countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland have sponsored the resolutions, but this year Uruguay took the lead and was backed by six other Latin American nations on the Human Rights Commission; Venezuela voted against and Brazil and Ecuador abstained. Even Chile, led by Socialist Ricardo Lagos, joined the call for democracy in Cuba.
''Castro has pretty much burned all his bridges,'' said Ana Maria Salazar, a former Clinton White House official now teaching at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM) in Mexico City. [End]
Venezuela is the only ally that Castro has left in the region.
December 11, 2001 - European Union Tells Cuba To Improve Human Rights *** The recent fence-mending between Cuba and the European Union evaporated Monday, with the EU telling the Castro government it had better improve its human rights record or else Cuba can forget about improved economic and diplomatic relations with the 15-nation EU. In a statement, the EU foreign ministers said the human rights situation in Cuba "is still seriously wanting as regards the recognition and application of civil and political freedoms." The ministers also criticized Cuba for refusing "to contemplate reforms leading to a political system based on those values." ***
Now you don't talk so loud;
Now you don't seem so proud.....
Did you hear the recoirding of the Fox/Castro conversation?
Fox was talking to Fidel as one would talk to someone very old, and feeble minded.
I ROTFLMAO.
You used to be so amused At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
More like, "Why it's great to be a communist dictator!"
That's an understatement!
Castro should have been taken out years ago.
Big Bump!!!
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